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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 200 126 125
Rank change year-on-year -74 -1 -42
Contract jobs citing Unix 560 664 875
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.45% 2.11% 1.95%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.77% 14.80% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 375 375 614
10th Percentile £204 £350 £363
25th Percentile £374 £425 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.29% -4.55% -0.09%
75th Percentile £625 £666 £661
90th Percentile £738 £765 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -8.53% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 21
10th Percentile £26.28 £38.70 £22.00
25th Percentile £26.31 £40.50 £22.30
Median hourly rate £27.75 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.32% +2.50% -37.98%
75th Percentile £29.31 £59.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £29.43 £69.50 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £47.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year - +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 4,756 4,486 6,379
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.34% 14.28% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,159 2,792 4,294
10th Percentile £175 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £319 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% +1.06% -8.56%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.29% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 157 383
10th Percentile £14.50 £16.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.91 £21.00 £17.23
Median hourly rate £24.00 £32.50 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -26.15% +28.71% -1.79%
75th Percentile £56.89 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.37 £69.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £29.89 £25.00
% change year-on-year -24.47% +19.56% +3.99%

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 1 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 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 1 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 -55 476 £475 -13.64% 94
UK excluding London -59 281 £435 -8.53% 80
London -34 227 £550 -8.33% 38
Work from Home -67 161 £454 -9.20% 45
North of England -29 89 £465 -24.08% 17
South East -18 77 £208 -53.11% 18
Midlands -51 64 £450 -10.00% 16
West Midlands -37 60 £450 -14.89% 12
North West -6 51 £455 -18.33% 14
Scotland -36 41 £425 -5.56% 9
Yorkshire -41 35 £495 -29.29% 1
South West -34 10 £700 +33.33% 10
North East -14 5 £563 +50.00% 2
East Midlands -26 4 £465 +10.06% 4
Wales -5 1 £265 +64.60% 3
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 3
East of England -35 1 £440 +10.00% 7

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 34 (6.07%) Apache
2 32 (5.71%) WebLogic
3 22 (3.93%) Confluence
4 18 (3.21%) JBoss
5 16 (2.86%) SharePoint
6 10 (1.79%) Tomcat
7 9 (1.61%) IIS
7 9 (1.61%) Tuxedo
7 9 (1.61%) WebSphere
8 8 (1.43%) iPlanet
8 8 (1.43%) WebSphere Application Server
9 6 (1.07%) Apache Spark
10 5 (0.89%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.89%) nginx
10 5 (0.89%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.89%) SAS
11 3 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.36%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.36%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.36%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 15 (2.68%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.07%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.07%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.89%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.54%) Kondor
4 3 (0.54%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.36%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.36%) Summit
6 1 (0.18%) Finacle
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
1 141 (25.18%) AWS
2 89 (15.89%) Azure
3 31 (5.54%) GCP
4 25 (4.46%) GitHub
5 22 (3.93%) SaaS
6 21 (3.75%) AWS CloudFormation
7 16 (2.86%) Sauce Labs
8 15 (2.68%) OpenShift
9 11 (1.96%) Amazon S3
9 11 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
9 11 (1.96%) Azure Monitor
9 11 (1.96%) Cloud Computing
9 11 (1.96%) Serverless
10 10 (1.79%) Amazon EC2
11 9 (1.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (1.61%) OCI
12 8 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (1.43%) Microsoft 365
12 8 (1.43%) Snowflake
13 6 (1.07%) Azure API Management
Communications & Networking
1 29 (5.18%) Firewall
2 20 (3.57%) HTTP
3 19 (3.39%) DNS
4 16 (2.86%) TCP/IP
4 16 (2.86%) Wireless
5 11 (1.96%) Network Security
5 11 (1.96%) SSH
6 9 (1.61%) Kerberos
7 5 (0.89%) FTP
7 5 (0.89%) SAN
8 4 (0.71%) DHCP
8 4 (0.71%) FIX Connectivity
8 4 (0.71%) NAS
8 4 (0.71%) SSL
8 4 (0.71%) Wireshark
9 3 (0.54%) Broadband
9 3 (0.54%) GPRS
9 3 (0.54%) GSM
9 3 (0.54%) InfiniBand
9 3 (0.54%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (9.46%) Relational Database
2 51 (9.11%) MySQL
3 48 (8.57%) MongoDB
4 41 (7.32%) Oracle Database
5 27 (4.82%) NoSQL
6 25 (4.46%) PostgreSQL
7 23 (4.11%) Elasticsearch
8 18 (3.21%) SQL Server
9 17 (3.04%) KDB
9 17 (3.04%) Kdb+
10 15 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
11 12 (2.14%) Big Data
12 11 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
13 10 (1.79%) Data Lake
14 9 (1.61%) Amazon Redshift
15 8 (1.43%) Tick Data
16 7 (1.25%) Metadata
16 7 (1.25%) RDBMS
17 6 (1.07%) Couchbase
17 6 (1.07%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 55 (9.82%) Jenkins
2 45 (8.04%) Git
3 33 (5.89%) JIRA
4 32 (5.71%) GitLab
5 25 (4.46%) Eclipse
6 20 (3.57%) JUnit
6 20 (3.57%) Mockito
7 18 (3.21%) Xcode
8 17 (3.04%) Browser DevTools
9 16 (2.86%) Android Studio
10 15 (2.68%) Sonatype Nexus
11 13 (2.32%) Selenium
12 10 (1.79%) Bitbucket
13 9 (1.61%) IntelliJ
13 9 (1.61%) Maven
14 8 (1.43%) Bitbucket Server
14 8 (1.43%) CA Release Automation
14 8 (1.43%) MSI
15 6 (1.07%) SoapUI
16 5 (0.89%) QUnit
General
1 157 (28.04%) Social Skills
2 145 (25.89%) Finance
3 74 (13.21%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (9.82%) Banking
5 33 (5.89%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.82%) Front Office
7 15 (2.68%) Investment Banking
8 14 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
9 13 (2.32%) Financial Institution
10 12 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.25%) Legal
12 6 (1.07%) Military
12 6 (1.07%) Telecoms
13 5 (0.89%) Law
14 4 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.54%) Billing
15 3 (0.54%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.36%) Marketing
16 2 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
16 2 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 114 (20.36%) Developer
2 98 (17.50%) Senior
3 46 (8.21%) Java Developer
4 44 (7.86%) Technical Support
5 38 (6.79%) Analyst
6 32 (5.71%) Unix Engineer
7 31 (5.54%) DevOps Engineer
7 31 (5.54%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 30 (5.36%) Support Engineer
9 28 (5.00%) Linux Engineer
10 26 (4.64%) Senior Developer
11 25 (4.46%) Site Engineer
12 24 (4.29%) Software Engineer
12 24 (4.29%) Technical Engineer
13 23 (4.11%) Consultant
14 22 (3.93%) C++ Software Engineer
14 22 (3.93%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
14 22 (3.93%) Senior Software Engineer
14 22 (3.93%) Technical Support Engineer
15 21 (3.75%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (13.93%) Kafka
2 37 (6.61%) REST
3 36 (6.43%) React
4 32 (5.71%) SOAP
5 26 (4.64%) XML
6 25 (4.46%) CSS
7 23 (4.11%) Middleware
8 22 (3.93%) AngularJS
8 22 (3.93%) HTML
9 19 (3.39%) ActiveMQ
9 19 (3.39%) JSON
10 18 (3.21%) JAX-RS
11 17 (3.04%) Ajax
11 17 (3.04%) GraphQL
12 16 (2.86%) Elastic Stack
13 15 (2.68%) HTML5
13 15 (2.68%) Spring
14 12 (2.14%) Hibernate
14 12 (2.14%) J2EE
15 10 (1.79%) FIX Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 30 (5.36%) Management Information System
2 20 (3.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 19 (3.39%) Mobile App
4 18 (3.21%) Linux Command Line
4 18 (3.21%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.68%) Cloud Native
6 14 (2.50%) Equities
7 13 (2.32%) Algorithms
7 13 (2.32%) Fixed Income
8 11 (1.96%) Derivative
8 11 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
9 10 (1.79%) Data Centre
9 10 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
9 10 (1.79%) Security Posture
10 9 (1.61%) Replication
11 8 (1.43%) Enterprise Cloud
11 8 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.43%) Tandem
12 7 (1.25%) PKI
12 7 (1.25%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 383 (68.39%) Linux
2 177 (31.61%) Windows
3 25 (4.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (4.29%) Mac OS X
5 22 (3.93%) Solaris
5 22 (3.93%) Windows Server
6 18 (3.21%) Android
7 13 (2.32%) Mac OS
8 12 (2.14%) CentOS
9 9 (1.61%) AIX
10 4 (0.71%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.36%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.18%) VMS
12 1 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.18%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (27.50%) Agile
2 115 (20.54%) Problem-Solving
3 107 (19.11%) DevOps
4 97 (17.32%) CI/CD
5 63 (11.25%) Computer Science
5 63 (11.25%) Microservices
6 62 (11.07%) Incident Response
7 60 (10.71%) OO
8 57 (10.18%) Observability
9 54 (9.64%) Software Engineering
10 51 (9.11%) Infrastructure as Code
11 48 (8.57%) Containerisation
11 48 (8.57%) Migration
11 48 (8.57%) TDD
11 48 (8.57%) Test Automation
12 47 (8.39%) Data Modelling
13 45 (8.04%) Analytics
13 45 (8.04%) Continuous Improvement
14 42 (7.50%) Performance Tuning
15 41 (7.32%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 223 (39.82%) Python
2 214 (38.21%) SQL
3 153 (27.32%) Java
4 95 (16.96%) Shell Script
5 79 (14.11%) Bash
6 77 (13.75%) Perl
7 53 (9.46%) JavaScript
8 47 (8.39%) C++
9 43 (7.68%) PowerShell
10 30 (5.36%) C#
11 27 (4.82%) PL/SQL
12 13 (2.32%) Go
13 12 (2.14%) Korn
13 12 (2.14%) Scala
14 10 (1.79%) Groovy
15 9 (1.61%) PHP
16 7 (1.25%) Search Processing Language
17 6 (1.07%) TypeScript
18 4 (0.71%) C
18 4 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 113 (20.18%) Security Cleared
2 90 (16.07%) Degree
3 81 (14.46%) SC Cleared
4 51 (9.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.79%) DV Cleared
6 10 (1.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 9 (1.61%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.07%) OSCP
9 5 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.89%) GPEN
9 5 (0.89%) GWAPT
9 5 (0.89%) ISTQB
9 5 (0.89%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (0.89%) RHCE
10 4 (0.71%) CISSP
11 3 (0.54%) CCIE
11 3 (0.54%) CCNA
11 3 (0.54%) CCNP
11 3 (0.54%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.21%) SLA
2 16 (2.86%) QA
3 8 (1.43%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.71%) GMP
4 4 (0.71%) HIPAA
4 4 (0.71%) NCSC
4 4 (0.71%) SOC 2
5 3 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.54%) NIST
5 3 (0.54%) SEPA
6 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.18%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.18%) FATCA
7 1 (0.18%) GDPR
7 1 (0.18%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.18%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 83 (14.82%) Docker
2 13 (2.32%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.61%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.43%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 6 (1.07%) KVM
6 5 (0.89%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.54%) GPFS
7 3 (0.54%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.54%) NFS
7 3 (0.54%) QEMU
7 3 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.36%) GridGain
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.18%) Ceph
9 1 (0.18%) iptables
9 1 (0.18%) Lustre
9 1 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.18%) Varnish
9 1 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.18%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 79 (14.11%) Kubernetes
2 62 (11.07%) Ansible
2 62 (11.07%) Terraform
3 31 (5.54%) Grafana
3 31 (5.54%) Puppet
4 20 (3.57%) Prometheus
5 15 (2.68%) Kibana
6 14 (2.50%) Progress Chef
7 9 (1.61%) Tivoli
8 8 (1.43%) CA Single Sign-On
8 8 (1.43%) CA Wily
9 7 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (1.07%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.07%) SCCM
11 5 (0.89%) Dell DRAC
11 5 (0.89%) ITRS Geneos
11 5 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.89%) NetBackup
12 4 (0.71%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 4 (0.71%) Packer
Vendors
1 171 (30.54%) Oracle
2 93 (16.61%) Splunk
3 71 (12.68%) Microsoft
4 39 (6.96%) IBM
5 32 (5.71%) ServiceNow
6 22 (3.93%) Red Hat
7 21 (3.75%) AppDynamics
8 17 (3.04%) VMware
9 16 (2.86%) Cisco
10 14 (2.50%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.61%) webMethods
12 8 (1.43%) Broadcom
12 8 (1.43%) Confluent
12 8 (1.43%) CrowdStrike
12 8 (1.43%) CyberArk
13 7 (1.25%) Dell
14 6 (1.07%) Ab Initio
14 6 (1.07%) Fujitsu
14 6 (1.07%) MuleSoft
14 6 (1.07%) Veritas