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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 167 115 110
Rank change year-on-year -52 -5 -24
Contract jobs citing Unix 605 752 1,035
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.69% 2.06% 2.24%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.48% 14.61% 14.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 402 462 725
10th Percentile £225 £348 £363
25th Percentile £377 £409 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £511 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.20% -7.05% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £738 £761 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £513
% change year-on-year -5.26% -7.32% -4.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 9 12
10th Percentile £26.30 £25.76 £22.00
25th Percentile £26.38 £26.25 £28.94
Median hourly rate £28.00 £41.00 £57.75
Median % change year-on-year -31.71% -29.00% -17.50%
75th Percentile £42.13 £41.50 £77.63
90th Percentile £49.70 £55.40 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.50 £34.25 £69.00
% change year-on-year +59.12% -50.36% +4.55%

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 4,848 5,148 7,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.51% 14.11% 15.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,131 3,153 4,786
10th Percentile £181 £200 £182
25th Percentile £272 £325 £303
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -5.88%
75th Percentile £574 £588 £611
90th Percentile £662 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £408 £450 £440
% change year-on-year -9.44% +2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 221 351
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.25 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £23.10 £18.50
Median hourly rate £24.00 £50.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.00% +42.86% +40.00%
75th Percentile £43.75 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.58 £50.00 £28.75
% change year-on-year -52.85% +73.91% +27.78%

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 November 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 21 November 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 21 November 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 -38 502 £500 -4.76% 172
UK excluding London -46 310 £450 -5.26% 83
London -31 248 £551 -2.04% 117
Work from Home -84 152 £475 -5.00% 79
North of England -25 89 £475 -16.85% 14
South East -15 82 £223 -46.55% 33
Scotland -10 62 £454 +11.27% 3
Midlands -57 52 £440 -14.77% 11
North West -3 50 £459 -14.64% 11
West Midlands -48 46 £515 -1.90% 6
Yorkshire -30 37 £613 -2.78% 3
South West -20 15 £700 +47.37% 6
East Midlands -14 6 £428 +15.00% 4
East of England -22 6 £500 +25.00% 5
Northern Ireland -8 4 - - 3
North East -9 4 £500 -9.09%
Wales 0 3 £265 +64.51% 9

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 40 (6.61%) Apache
2 32 (5.29%) Confluence
3 27 (4.46%) WebLogic
4 24 (3.97%) JBoss
5 19 (3.14%) SharePoint
6 15 (2.48%) Tomcat
7 13 (2.15%) WebSphere
8 9 (1.49%) IIS
9 8 (1.32%) iPlanet
9 8 (1.32%) WebSphere Application Server
10 6 (0.99%) nginx
10 6 (0.99%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.83%) Apache Spark
11 5 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
11 5 (0.83%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.66%) NetWeaver
13 3 (0.50%) Apache Airflow
14 2 (0.33%) Oracle HTTP Server
14 2 (0.33%) SAS
15 1 (0.17%) CICS
Applications
1 17 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (1.32%) Oracle EBS
1 8 (1.32%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.83%) ION MarketView
2 5 (0.83%) Kondor
2 5 (0.83%) Oracle Assets
2 5 (0.83%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.66%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 4 (0.66%) SAP IBP
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle BRM
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Finacle
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.17%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 168 (27.77%) AWS
2 109 (18.02%) Azure
3 36 (5.95%) GCP
4 34 (5.62%) GitHub
5 26 (4.30%) SaaS
6 22 (3.64%) OpenShift
7 19 (3.14%) Azure Monitor
8 18 (2.98%) Amazon EC2
8 18 (2.98%) AWS CloudFormation
8 18 (2.98%) Sauce Labs
9 15 (2.48%) Amazon S3
10 13 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (1.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 11 (1.82%) Cloud Computing
13 10 (1.65%) Serverless
14 9 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 9 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
14 9 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
15 8 (1.32%) Microsoft 365
16 7 (1.16%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (6.78%) Firewall
2 35 (5.79%) TCP/IP
3 30 (4.96%) DNS
3 30 (4.96%) HTTP
4 20 (3.31%) SSL
4 20 (3.31%) Wireless
5 17 (2.81%) SSH
6 13 (2.15%) Network Security
7 12 (1.98%) SAN
8 10 (1.65%) DHCP
9 9 (1.49%) Kerberos
10 7 (1.16%) Internet
11 6 (0.99%) VPN
12 5 (0.83%) FTP
13 4 (0.66%) Wireshark
14 3 (0.50%) Broadband
14 3 (0.50%) GPRS
14 3 (0.50%) GSM
14 3 (0.50%) Unified Communications
14 3 (0.50%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (9.09%) Relational Database
2 52 (8.60%) MongoDB
3 50 (8.26%) MySQL
4 44 (7.27%) Oracle Database
5 28 (4.63%) NoSQL
6 21 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 21 (3.47%) SQL Server
7 16 (2.64%) Elasticsearch
8 15 (2.48%) KDB
9 13 (2.15%) Amazon RDS
9 13 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
9 13 (2.15%) Kdb+
10 11 (1.82%) Big Data
11 10 (1.65%) Data Lake
11 10 (1.65%) DB2
12 9 (1.49%) RDBMS
13 8 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
14 7 (1.16%) Hadoop
15 6 (0.99%) Couchbase
15 6 (0.99%) Redis
Development Applications
1 82 (13.55%) Git
2 77 (12.73%) Jenkins
3 54 (8.93%) JIRA
4 36 (5.95%) GitLab
5 32 (5.29%) JUnit
6 29 (4.79%) Eclipse
7 27 (4.46%) Maven
8 25 (4.13%) Sonatype Nexus
9 23 (3.80%) Mockito
9 23 (3.80%) Xcode
10 19 (3.14%) Browser DevTools
11 18 (2.98%) Android Studio
12 16 (2.64%) Bitbucket
12 16 (2.64%) Gradle
13 15 (2.48%) IntelliJ
13 15 (2.48%) Selenium
14 9 (1.49%) Postman
14 9 (1.49%) SoapUI
14 9 (1.49%) SonarQube
15 8 (1.32%) CA Release Automation
General
1 191 (31.57%) Social Skills
2 176 (29.09%) Finance
3 87 (14.38%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (9.09%) Banking
5 35 (5.79%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.13%) Financial Institution
7 24 (3.97%) Front Office
8 13 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
9 10 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
10 9 (1.49%) Investment Banking
11 8 (1.32%) Legal
12 7 (1.16%) Back Office
13 6 (0.99%) Manufacturing
13 6 (0.99%) Military
14 5 (0.83%) Telecoms
15 4 (0.66%) General Ledger
15 4 (0.66%) Marketing
16 3 (0.50%) Law
16 3 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
16 3 (0.50%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 134 (22.15%) Developer
2 98 (16.20%) Senior
3 58 (9.59%) Java Developer
4 43 (7.11%) Analyst
5 40 (6.61%) Technical Support
6 33 (5.45%) DevOps Engineer
7 32 (5.29%) Support Engineer
8 28 (4.63%) Linux Engineer
8 28 (4.63%) Technical Engineer
9 27 (4.46%) Senior Developer
10 24 (3.97%) Technical Support Engineer
11 21 (3.47%) Software Engineer
12 20 (3.31%) Administrator
12 20 (3.31%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 19 (3.14%) Lead
13 19 (3.14%) Platform Engineer
13 19 (3.14%) UX Engineer
14 18 (2.98%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
15 17 (2.81%) Kafka Engineer
15 17 (2.81%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (12.56%) Kafka
2 49 (8.10%) SOAP
3 47 (7.77%) REST
4 38 (6.28%) React
5 35 (5.79%) Spring
6 33 (5.45%) AngularJS
7 32 (5.29%) Middleware
8 31 (5.12%) CSS
9 29 (4.79%) XML
10 27 (4.46%) HTML
11 26 (4.30%) JSON
12 21 (3.47%) ActiveMQ
12 21 (3.47%) Spring Boot
13 20 (3.31%) J2EE
14 19 (3.14%) Ajax
14 19 (3.14%) GraphQL
15 18 (2.98%) Hibernate
15 18 (2.98%) JAX-RS
16 14 (2.31%) HTML5
16 14 (2.31%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 35 (5.79%) Management Information System
2 27 (4.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 22 (3.64%) Data Centre
4 21 (3.47%) Mobile App
5 20 (3.31%) Onboarding
6 18 (2.98%) Security Posture
7 17 (2.81%) Distributed Systems
8 16 (2.64%) Algorithms
9 15 (2.48%) Cloud Native
9 15 (2.48%) Linux Command Line
10 13 (2.15%) Fixed Income
10 13 (2.15%) Tandem
11 12 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (1.82%) Replication
13 10 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
13 10 (1.65%) Equities
13 10 (1.65%) Legacy Applications
13 10 (1.65%) Private Cloud
14 9 (1.49%) Derivative
14 9 (1.49%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 435 (71.90%) Linux
2 185 (30.58%) Windows
3 31 (5.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (3.97%) Windows Server
5 23 (3.80%) Mac OS X
6 20 (3.31%) Android
6 20 (3.31%) CentOS
7 14 (2.31%) Solaris
8 11 (1.82%) Mac OS
9 9 (1.49%) Ubuntu
10 7 (1.16%) AIX
11 3 (0.50%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 3 (0.50%) VMS
11 3 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.33%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.33%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.33%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.33%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (30.91%) Agile
2 130 (21.49%) Problem-Solving
3 119 (19.67%) CI/CD
4 117 (19.34%) DevOps
5 71 (11.74%) Microservices
5 71 (11.74%) OO
6 64 (10.58%) Incident Response
7 60 (9.92%) Continuous Improvement
8 59 (9.75%) Test Automation
9 57 (9.42%) Infrastructure as Code
10 56 (9.26%) Software Engineering
11 54 (8.93%) Computer Science
12 49 (8.10%) TDD
13 47 (7.77%) Analytics
14 46 (7.60%) Observability
15 44 (7.27%) Containerisation
16 41 (6.78%) Migration
17 40 (6.61%) Mentoring
18 39 (6.45%) Change Management
18 39 (6.45%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 248 (40.99%) Python
2 225 (37.19%) SQL
3 170 (28.10%) Java
4 111 (18.35%) Shell Script
5 92 (15.21%) Perl
6 67 (11.07%) Bash
7 64 (10.58%) JavaScript
8 52 (8.60%) C++
9 33 (5.45%) PowerShell
10 32 (5.29%) C#
11 28 (4.63%) PL/SQL
12 13 (2.15%) C
12 13 (2.15%) Go
12 13 (2.15%) Groovy
12 13 (2.15%) Scala
13 9 (1.49%) Search Processing Language
13 9 (1.49%) TypeScript
14 8 (1.32%) Korn
14 8 (1.32%) PHP
15 6 (0.99%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 91 (15.04%) Security Cleared
2 78 (12.89%) Degree
3 65 (10.74%) SC Cleared
4 41 (6.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (2.15%) AWS Certification
6 13 (2.15%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.98%) CISSP
8 10 (1.65%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
10 5 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (0.83%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (0.83%) MCSA
10 5 (0.83%) MCSE
10 5 (0.83%) OSCP
11 4 (0.66%) GPEN
11 4 (0.66%) GWAPT
11 4 (0.66%) ISTQB
11 4 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.64%) QA
2 10 (1.65%) SLA
3 9 (1.49%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.16%) NCSC
5 4 (0.66%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.66%) SOC 2
6 3 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.50%) NIST
7 2 (0.33%) Basel III
7 2 (0.33%) GMP
7 2 (0.33%) MiFID
7 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.33%) SEPA
8 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.17%) GDPR
8 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 82 (13.55%) Docker
2 26 (4.30%) Active Directory
3 13 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.32%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 5 (0.83%) KVM
6 4 (0.66%) Veritas Cluster Server
6 4 (0.66%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.66%) vSphere
7 3 (0.50%) NFS
7 3 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
7 3 (0.50%) QEMU
8 2 (0.33%) GridGain
9 1 (0.17%) GPFS
9 1 (0.17%) RACF
9 1 (0.17%) Samba
9 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.17%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
9 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 71 (11.74%) Kubernetes
1 71 (11.74%) Terraform
2 61 (10.08%) Ansible
3 35 (5.79%) Puppet
4 29 (4.79%) Grafana
5 23 (3.80%) Prometheus
6 14 (2.31%) Progress Chef
7 9 (1.49%) Red Hat Satellite
7 9 (1.49%) Tivoli
8 8 (1.32%) CA Single Sign-On
8 8 (1.32%) CA Wily
8 8 (1.32%) ITRS Geneos
8 8 (1.32%) Packer
9 7 (1.16%) Jamf Pro
9 7 (1.16%) Nessus
9 7 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.99%) Kibana
11 5 (0.83%) CASB
11 5 (0.83%) Control-M
11 5 (0.83%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 173 (28.60%) Oracle
2 101 (16.69%) Splunk
3 84 (13.88%) Microsoft
4 41 (6.78%) IBM
5 34 (5.62%) ServiceNow
6 30 (4.96%) VMware
7 29 (4.79%) Red Hat
8 27 (4.46%) Dynatrace
9 25 (4.13%) AppDynamics
10 20 (3.31%) Cisco
11 16 (2.64%) F5
12 15 (2.48%) CyberArk
13 14 (2.31%) MuleSoft
14 11 (1.82%) SAP
15 10 (1.65%) Google
15 10 (1.65%) webMethods
16 9 (1.49%) Tenable
16 9 (1.49%) TIBCO
17 8 (1.32%) Confluent
17 8 (1.32%) Okta