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 16 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 218 160 134
Rank change year-on-year -58 -26 -51
Contract jobs citing Unix 565 522 735
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 1.79% 1.73%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.05% 12.88% 12.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 340 311 495
10th Percentile £264 £363 £340
25th Percentile £400 £414 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £488 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -11.36% -
75th Percentile £561 £600 £650
90th Percentile £678 £688 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £465 £470
% change year-on-year -3.12% -1.17% -12.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 6 18
10th Percentile £21.50 £38.49 £22.23
25th Percentile £27.88 £43.19 £27.85
Median hourly rate £52.50 £53.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% +34.38% -31.73%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £46.56
90th Percentile £55.00 £65.63 £66.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £53.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -11.55% +34.38% -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 4,688 4,052 5,658
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.76% 13.91% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,021 2,663 3,818
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £467 £470
Median % change year-on-year -2.25% -0.74% -6.09%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £656 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £444 £445 £450
% change year-on-year -0.22% -1.11% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 177 390
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.24 £12.73
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.31
Median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.11% +2.27% -42.86%
75th Percentile £67.25 £57.50 £60.56
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.10 £21.59 £22.50
% change year-on-year +108.90% -4.04% -23.21%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 -46 479 £471 -5.80% 116
UK excluding London -42 337 £450 -3.12% 80
London -75 177 £581 +11.73% 51
Work from Home -35 166 £469 -1.26% 114
North of England -26 103 £474 +5.33% 22
South East -25 98 £358 -28.40% 30
Midlands -10 88 £459 -0.22% 9
West Midlands -2 82 £456 -0.92% 7
North West +7 80 £475 +6.26% 15
Scotland -44 40 £425 -9.96% 3
Yorkshire -63 18 £460 -12.38% 5
North East -17 5 £480 +28.00% 2
East Midlands -28 5 £525 +28.05% 2
South West -40 5 £600 +64.38% 10
East of England -43 5 £300 -33.33% 5
Wales -8 4 - -

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 21 (3.72%) Confluence
2 20 (3.54%) WebLogic
3 18 (3.19%) Apache
4 17 (3.01%) Apache Spark
5 16 (2.83%) Tuxedo
6 15 (2.65%) SAS
7 12 (2.12%) Apache Airflow
8 10 (1.77%) CICS
9 8 (1.42%) SharePoint
10 7 (1.24%) NetWeaver
11 6 (1.06%) OpenStack
11 6 (1.06%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 4 (0.71%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.53%) IBM HTTP Server
13 3 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
13 3 (0.53%) WebSphere
13 3 (0.53%) WebSphere Application Server
14 2 (0.35%) Oracle HTTP Server
14 2 (0.35%) Oracle Spatial
14 2 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 11 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (1.24%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (1.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.06%) Summit
3 5 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.18%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.18%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 101 (17.88%) AWS
2 76 (13.45%) Azure
3 32 (5.66%) GitHub
4 24 (4.25%) AWS Lambda
5 23 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
5 23 (4.07%) Serverless
6 21 (3.72%) Amazon S3
6 21 (3.72%) Entra ID
7 20 (3.54%) GCP
8 18 (3.19%) OpenShift
9 14 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (2.48%) IaaS
9 14 (2.48%) PaaS
9 14 (2.48%) SaaS
10 10 (1.77%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (1.77%) Power Platform
10 10 (1.77%) Snowflake
11 8 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.42%) Azure Data Factory
11 8 (1.42%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 32 (5.66%) Firewall
2 23 (4.07%) DNS
3 18 (3.19%) SAN
4 15 (2.65%) TCP/IP
5 12 (2.12%) HTTP
5 12 (2.12%) NAS
6 9 (1.59%) Network Security
6 9 (1.59%) SSH
6 9 (1.59%) Wireless
7 8 (1.42%) InfiniBand
7 8 (1.42%) Wireshark
8 7 (1.24%) 5G
8 7 (1.24%) Ethernet
8 7 (1.24%) NetScaler
8 7 (1.24%) PuTTY
8 7 (1.24%) SSL
8 7 (1.24%) VPN
8 7 (1.24%) WinSCP
9 6 (1.06%) LTE
9 6 (1.06%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (11.68%) SQL Server
2 49 (8.67%) Relational Database
3 38 (6.73%) MySQL
3 38 (6.73%) Oracle Database
4 34 (6.02%) MongoDB
4 34 (6.02%) PostgreSQL
5 19 (3.36%) Metadata
6 18 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
7 17 (3.01%) Big Data
7 17 (3.01%) NoSQL
8 15 (2.65%) KDB
9 14 (2.48%) Amazon Aurora
10 13 (2.30%) BusinessObjects
10 13 (2.30%) DataStage
10 13 (2.30%) DB2
10 13 (2.30%) Kdb+
11 10 (1.77%) Power BI
11 10 (1.77%) RDBMS
12 9 (1.59%) Data Lake
12 9 (1.59%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 56 (9.91%) Jenkins
2 44 (7.79%) Git
3 41 (7.26%) GitLab
4 37 (6.55%) JIRA
5 13 (2.30%) Artifactory
6 12 (2.12%) Mockito
7 11 (1.95%) MSI
8 9 (1.59%) Sonatype Nexus
9 8 (1.42%) Bitbucket
9 8 (1.42%) Maven
10 6 (1.06%) Android Studio
10 6 (1.06%) Browser DevTools
10 6 (1.06%) Eclipse
10 6 (1.06%) Xcode
11 5 (0.88%) SonarQube
12 4 (0.71%) CA Gen
12 4 (0.71%) Toad
13 3 (0.53%) CircleCI
13 3 (0.53%) Introscope
13 3 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 136 (24.07%) Finance
2 122 (21.59%) Social Skills
3 82 (14.51%) Banking
4 65 (11.50%) Analytical Skills
5 58 (10.27%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.42%) Investment Banking
7 19 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
8 18 (3.19%) Front Office
9 11 (1.95%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.77%) Financial Institution
10 10 (1.77%) Influencing Skills
11 8 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.24%) Retail
13 6 (1.06%) Advertising
14 5 (0.88%) Law
14 5 (0.88%) Military
15 2 (0.35%) Local Government
15 2 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
16 1 (0.18%) Billing
16 1 (0.18%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 100 (17.70%) Developer
2 76 (13.45%) Senior
3 52 (9.20%) Data Engineer
4 49 (8.67%) Unix Engineer
5 45 (7.96%) Analyst
6 38 (6.73%) Java Developer
6 38 (6.73%) Support Engineer
7 30 (5.31%) DBA
8 28 (4.96%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 27 (4.78%) Senior Developer
10 26 (4.60%) Technical Support
11 25 (4.42%) Oracle DBA
12 24 (4.25%) Administrator
12 24 (4.25%) Site Engineer
13 23 (4.07%) Architect
14 21 (3.72%) Python Developer
15 19 (3.36%) DevOps Engineer
15 19 (3.36%) Software Engineer
16 17 (3.01%) Consultant
16 17 (3.01%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (10.09%) Kafka
2 30 (5.31%) REST
3 27 (4.78%) RESTful
4 25 (4.42%) Middleware
5 18 (3.19%) XML
6 16 (2.83%) CSS
7 15 (2.65%) Spring
8 14 (2.48%) Elastic Stack
8 14 (2.48%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 14 (2.48%) Spring Boot
9 13 (2.30%) React
10 12 (2.12%) JAX-RS
10 12 (2.12%) Web Services
11 11 (1.95%) ActiveMQ
11 11 (1.95%) AngularJS
11 11 (1.95%) HTML
11 11 (1.95%) LDAP
12 10 (1.77%) Pandas
13 9 (1.59%) JSON
14 8 (1.42%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 35 (6.19%) Onboarding
2 33 (5.84%) Linux Command Line
3 28 (4.96%) Management Information System
4 23 (4.07%) Data Centre
5 22 (3.89%) Cloud Native
5 22 (3.89%) Legacy Systems
6 17 (3.01%) Derivative
7 16 (2.83%) Mainframe
8 15 (2.65%) Fixed Income
9 12 (2.12%) Replication
10 11 (1.95%) Clustering
10 11 (1.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 11 (1.95%) Public Cloud
11 10 (1.77%) BYOD
11 10 (1.77%) Equities
11 10 (1.77%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.77%) VSAM
12 9 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
13 8 (1.42%) Operational Technology
14 7 (1.24%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 373 (66.02%) Linux
2 158 (27.96%) Windows
3 43 (7.61%) Solaris
4 34 (6.02%) Windows Server
5 27 (4.78%) AIX
6 20 (3.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.30%) Mac OS X
8 7 (1.24%) Oracle Linux
9 6 (1.06%) Android
10 5 (0.88%) HPUX
10 5 (0.88%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.71%) SUSE
12 2 (0.35%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.35%) VMS
13 1 (0.18%) CentOS
13 1 (0.18%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.18%) Rocky
13 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.18%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 121 (21.42%) Agile
2 108 (19.12%) CI/CD
3 102 (18.05%) Problem-Solving
4 92 (16.28%) Migration
5 83 (14.69%) DevOps
6 70 (12.39%) High Availability
7 66 (11.68%) ITIL
8 62 (10.97%) Observability
9 58 (10.27%) Disaster Recovery
10 57 (10.09%) Root Cause Analysis
11 55 (9.73%) Performance Tuning
12 49 (8.67%) Incident Management
12 49 (8.67%) Test Automation
13 47 (8.32%) Change Management
13 47 (8.32%) Containerisation
14 45 (7.96%) Computer Science
14 45 (7.96%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 45 (7.96%) Software Engineering
15 44 (7.79%) Data Modelling
15 44 (7.79%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 221 (39.12%) Python
2 216 (38.23%) SQL
3 115 (20.35%) Java
4 103 (18.23%) Shell Script
5 60 (10.62%) Bash
6 55 (9.73%) PL/SQL
7 54 (9.56%) Perl
8 52 (9.20%) PowerShell
9 39 (6.90%) JavaScript
10 26 (4.60%) C#
10 26 (4.60%) C++
11 20 (3.54%) Korn
12 11 (1.95%) COBOL
13 9 (1.59%) Go
14 8 (1.42%) Scala
15 7 (1.24%) PHP
16 4 (0.71%) Kotlin
17 3 (0.53%) HiveQL
17 3 (0.53%) Jython
17 3 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 180 (31.86%) Security Cleared
2 150 (26.55%) SC Cleared
3 72 (12.74%) Degree
4 31 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (3.01%) CISSP
7 9 (1.59%) CompTIA Security+
7 9 (1.59%) DV Cleared
8 8 (1.42%) CISM
9 7 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (1.06%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (1.06%) CRISC
10 6 (1.06%) GIAC
10 6 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (0.88%) MCSA
11 5 (0.88%) MCSE
11 5 (0.88%) RHCE
11 5 (0.88%) SANS
12 4 (0.71%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (5.13%) NIST
3 21 (3.72%) SLA
4 14 (2.48%) QA
5 8 (1.42%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.24%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (1.06%) ISO 31000
8 4 (0.71%) GRC
8 4 (0.71%) ISO 20022
8 4 (0.71%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.53%) FATCA
10 2 (0.35%) GDPR
10 2 (0.35%) GMP
10 2 (0.35%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.35%) NCSC
10 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.35%) SEPA
11 1 (0.18%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 65 (11.50%) Docker
2 34 (6.02%) Active Directory
3 18 (3.19%) Oracle RAC
4 16 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (2.65%) NFS
6 9 (1.59%) GPFS
7 8 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
8 7 (1.24%) KVM
9 6 (1.06%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.88%) Postfix
10 5 (0.88%) Varnish
10 5 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.88%) vSphere
11 4 (0.71%) HDFS
11 4 (0.71%) Sendmail
12 3 (0.53%) Firmware
12 3 (0.53%) GridGain
12 3 (0.53%) PowerHA
13 2 (0.35%) SRDF
14 1 (0.18%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 73 (12.92%) Kubernetes
2 68 (12.04%) Ansible
3 44 (7.79%) Grafana
4 40 (7.08%) Terraform
5 27 (4.78%) Oracle RMAN
6 26 (4.60%) Prometheus
7 16 (2.83%) Kibana
7 16 (2.83%) Puppet
8 15 (2.65%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 11 (1.95%) Data Guard
10 9 (1.59%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (1.42%) NetBackup
11 8 (1.42%) Progress Chef
12 6 (1.06%) HAProxy
12 6 (1.06%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.06%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.88%) CASB
13 5 (0.88%) Nessus
13 5 (0.88%) vRealize
13 5 (0.88%) VxRail
Vendors
1 214 (37.88%) Oracle
2 57 (10.09%) Splunk
3 44 (7.79%) Microsoft
4 41 (7.26%) IBM
5 28 (4.96%) ServiceNow
6 27 (4.78%) CyberArk
7 26 (4.60%) BeyondTrust
8 25 (4.42%) VMware
9 22 (3.89%) Informatica
10 21 (3.72%) Cisco
10 21 (3.72%) Talend
11 17 (3.01%) Red Hat
12 16 (2.83%) Sybase
13 12 (2.12%) Denodo
14 11 (1.95%) Dynatrace
15 9 (1.59%) CheckPoint
15 9 (1.59%) F5
15 9 (1.59%) Fujitsu
15 9 (1.59%) Veritas
16 8 (1.42%) Remedy