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

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 172 118 109
Rank change year-on-year -54 -9 -23
Contract jobs citing Unix 606 744 1,046
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.73% 2.03% 2.24%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.70% 14.37% 14.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 401 465 737
10th Percentile £221 £333 £360
25th Percentile £368 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £505 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.57% -8.18% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £738 £764 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 10
10th Percentile £26.33 £24.78 £21.88
25th Percentile £26.44 £26.25 £48.44
Median hourly rate £41.25 £27.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -57.69% -7.14%
75th Percentile £58.56 £38.00 £77.88
90th Percentile £65.43 £47.00 £78.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £27.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year +126.36% -63.33% +7.14%

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 4,771 5,178 7,122
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.65% 14.10% 15.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,067 3,189 4,842
10th Percentile £185 £200 £181
25th Percentile £268 £325 £305
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -2.56% -4.41%
75th Percentile £573 £576 £613
90th Percentile £657 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £449 £443
% change year-on-year -8.80% +1.47% -1.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 218 357
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.25 £14.26
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.31 £18.00
Median hourly rate £24.00 £52.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -54.29% +56.72% +34.00%
75th Percentile £41.31 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.53 £52.75 £27.50
% change year-on-year -57.29% +91.82% +22.22%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -43 500 £500 -4.76% 394
UK excluding London -42 313 £450 - 279
London -27 247 £550 - 245
Work from Home -65 151 £475 -4.57% 201
North of England -8 83 £475 -16.30% 47
South East -20 81 £223 -46.55% 173
Scotland +1 66 £454 +17.31% 7
Midlands -39 56 £430 -16.10% 17
West Midlands -48 48 £480 -8.57% 11
North West -18 42 £453 -15.80% 33
Yorkshire -10 39 £590 +1.72% 13
South West -14 17 £700 +47.37% 9
East Midlands -15 8 £418 +17.28% 4
East of England -21 6 £500 +11.11% 6
Northern Ireland -5 5 - - 8
North East -8 4 £500 +42.86% 1
Wales +3 2 £283 +75.38% 14

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 36 (5.94%) Apache
2 32 (5.28%) Confluence
3 31 (5.12%) WebLogic
4 25 (4.13%) JBoss
5 16 (2.64%) SharePoint
6 14 (2.31%) Tomcat
7 13 (2.15%) WebSphere
8 9 (1.49%) IIS
9 8 (1.32%) iPlanet
9 8 (1.32%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (1.32%) WebSphere Application Server
10 7 (1.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.99%) Apache Spark
11 6 (0.99%) nginx
12 5 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
13 4 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
13 4 (0.66%) NetWeaver
14 2 (0.33%) Oracle HTTP Server
14 2 (0.33%) SAS
15 1 (0.17%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 13 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (1.65%) Oracle EBS
1 10 (1.65%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.83%) ION MarketView
2 5 (0.83%) Kondor
2 5 (0.83%) Oracle BPM
3 4 (0.66%) Oracle Assets
3 4 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
3 4 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.66%) SAP IBP
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Finacle
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle BRM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.17%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 173 (28.55%) AWS
2 109 (17.99%) Azure
3 41 (6.77%) GCP
4 35 (5.78%) GitHub
5 26 (4.29%) SaaS
6 23 (3.80%) OpenShift
7 19 (3.14%) Azure Monitor
8 18 (2.97%) Amazon EC2
8 18 (2.97%) AWS CloudFormation
8 18 (2.97%) Sauce Labs
9 15 (2.48%) Amazon S3
9 15 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (1.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 11 (1.82%) Cloud Computing
12 10 (1.65%) OCI
12 10 (1.65%) Serverless
13 9 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 9 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
13 9 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (1.32%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 37 (6.11%) Firewall
2 36 (5.94%) TCP/IP
3 30 (4.95%) DNS
4 24 (3.96%) HTTP
5 20 (3.30%) SSL
5 20 (3.30%) Wireless
6 17 (2.81%) SSH
7 12 (1.98%) SAN
8 10 (1.65%) DHCP
9 9 (1.49%) Kerberos
10 8 (1.32%) Internet
10 8 (1.32%) Network Security
11 6 (0.99%) VPN
12 5 (0.83%) Wireshark
13 4 (0.66%) FTP
14 3 (0.50%) Unified Communications
14 3 (0.50%) VoIP
15 2 (0.33%) BGP
15 2 (0.33%) Ethernet VPN
15 2 (0.33%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (9.08%) Relational Database
2 51 (8.42%) MongoDB
2 51 (8.42%) MySQL
3 41 (6.77%) Oracle Database
4 27 (4.46%) NoSQL
5 23 (3.80%) SQL Server
6 22 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
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
10 11 (1.82%) DB2
11 10 (1.65%) Data Lake
12 9 (1.49%) BigQuery
13 8 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
13 8 (1.32%) RDBMS
14 7 (1.16%) Hadoop
14 7 (1.16%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 88 (14.52%) Git
2 80 (13.20%) Jenkins
3 57 (9.41%) JIRA
4 37 (6.11%) GitLab
5 34 (5.61%) JUnit
6 30 (4.95%) Maven
7 29 (4.79%) Eclipse
8 27 (4.46%) Sonatype Nexus
9 25 (4.13%) Mockito
10 24 (3.96%) Xcode
11 19 (3.14%) Browser DevTools
12 18 (2.97%) Android Studio
12 18 (2.97%) Bitbucket
12 18 (2.97%) Gradle
13 15 (2.48%) IntelliJ
13 15 (2.48%) Selenium
14 12 (1.98%) SonarQube
15 10 (1.65%) Postman
16 9 (1.49%) Subversion
17 8 (1.32%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 189 (31.19%) Social Skills
2 166 (27.39%) Finance
3 91 (15.02%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (8.75%) Banking
5 36 (5.94%) Public Sector
6 24 (3.96%) Financial Institution
6 24 (3.96%) Front Office
7 13 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
8 9 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.49%) Investment Banking
9 8 (1.32%) Legal
10 7 (1.16%) Back Office
11 6 (0.99%) Military
11 6 (0.99%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.83%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.66%) General Ledger
13 4 (0.66%) Marketing
14 3 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.50%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 133 (21.95%) Developer
2 102 (16.83%) Senior
3 61 (10.07%) Java Developer
4 46 (7.59%) Analyst
5 41 (6.77%) Technical Support
6 34 (5.61%) DevOps Engineer
7 33 (5.45%) Support Engineer
8 29 (4.79%) Senior Developer
8 29 (4.79%) Technical Engineer
9 28 (4.62%) Linux Engineer
10 25 (4.13%) Technical Support Engineer
11 22 (3.63%) Architect
11 22 (3.63%) Software Engineer
12 20 (3.30%) Lead
12 20 (3.30%) Platform Engineer
12 20 (3.30%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 19 (3.14%) Administrator
13 19 (3.14%) UX Engineer
14 18 (2.97%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
14 18 (2.97%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (12.38%) Kafka
2 48 (7.92%) REST
3 47 (7.76%) SOAP
4 39 (6.44%) Spring
5 38 (6.27%) React
6 34 (5.61%) AngularJS
7 32 (5.28%) CSS
8 31 (5.12%) Middleware
9 28 (4.62%) HTML
10 26 (4.29%) JSON
10 26 (4.29%) XML
11 23 (3.80%) Spring Boot
12 21 (3.47%) Hibernate
12 21 (3.47%) J2EE
13 20 (3.30%) ActiveMQ
14 19 (3.14%) Ajax
14 19 (3.14%) GraphQL
15 17 (2.81%) JAX-RS
16 15 (2.48%) HTML5
17 14 (2.31%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 37 (6.11%) Management Information System
2 26 (4.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 24 (3.96%) Data Centre
4 21 (3.47%) Mobile App
4 21 (3.47%) Onboarding
5 19 (3.14%) Distributed Systems
5 19 (3.14%) Security Posture
6 16 (2.64%) Algorithms
7 15 (2.48%) Cloud Native
7 15 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
7 15 (2.48%) Linux Command Line
8 13 (2.15%) Tandem
9 12 (1.98%) Fixed Income
10 11 (1.82%) Legacy Applications
10 11 (1.82%) Replication
11 10 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
11 10 (1.65%) Equities
11 10 (1.65%) Private Cloud
12 9 (1.49%) Data Structures
12 9 (1.49%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 429 (70.79%) Linux
2 186 (30.69%) Windows
3 30 (4.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (3.96%) Windows Server
5 22 (3.63%) Mac OS X
6 20 (3.30%) Android
6 20 (3.30%) CentOS
7 14 (2.31%) Solaris
8 11 (1.82%) Mac OS
9 9 (1.49%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.66%) 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
1 194 (32.01%) Agile
2 127 (20.96%) Problem-Solving
3 124 (20.46%) CI/CD
4 118 (19.47%) DevOps
5 74 (12.21%) Microservices
6 73 (12.05%) OO
7 64 (10.56%) Incident Response
8 60 (9.90%) Continuous Improvement
9 59 (9.74%) Test Automation
10 58 (9.57%) Software Engineering
11 57 (9.41%) Infrastructure as Code
12 56 (9.24%) Computer Science
13 48 (7.92%) TDD
14 46 (7.59%) Analytics
15 42 (6.93%) Observability
16 41 (6.77%) Containerisation
17 40 (6.60%) Mentoring
17 40 (6.60%) Migration
18 39 (6.44%) Incident Management
19 38 (6.27%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 253 (41.75%) Python
2 225 (37.13%) SQL
3 170 (28.05%) Java
4 113 (18.65%) Shell Script
5 90 (14.85%) Perl
6 69 (11.39%) Bash
7 65 (10.73%) JavaScript
8 53 (8.75%) C++
9 33 (5.45%) PowerShell
10 30 (4.95%) C#
11 22 (3.63%) PL/SQL
12 15 (2.48%) Groovy
13 14 (2.31%) Scala
14 13 (2.15%) C
14 13 (2.15%) Go
15 10 (1.65%) TypeScript
16 9 (1.49%) Search Processing Language
17 7 (1.16%) SystemVerilog
18 6 (0.99%) PromQL
19 5 (0.83%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 94 (15.51%) Security Cleared
2 80 (13.20%) Degree
3 67 (11.06%) SC Cleared
4 42 (6.93%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (3.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (2.31%) AWS Certification
7 13 (2.15%) DV Cleared
8 12 (1.98%) CISSP
9 10 (1.65%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 7 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.99%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 5 (0.83%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
12 5 (0.83%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.83%) MCSA
12 5 (0.83%) MCSE
12 5 (0.83%) OSCP
13 4 (0.66%) MCP
13 4 (0.66%) OCP
13 4 (0.66%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.46%) QA
2 10 (1.65%) SLA
3 8 (1.32%) 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%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.33%) Basel III
7 2 (0.33%) GMP
7 2 (0.33%) MiFID
7 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.17%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.17%) GDPR
8 1 (0.17%) IEC 61508
8 1 (0.17%) MISRA
8 1 (0.17%) MISRA C
8 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 82 (13.53%) Docker
2 26 (4.29%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.32%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 6 (0.99%) Oracle RAC
6 5 (0.83%) KVM
7 4 (0.66%) Veritas Cluster Server
7 4 (0.66%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.66%) vSphere
8 3 (0.50%) NFS
8 3 (0.50%) QEMU
9 2 (0.33%) GridGain
10 1 (0.17%) RACF
10 1 (0.17%) Samba
10 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
10 1 (0.17%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
10 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 74 (12.21%) Kubernetes
2 71 (11.72%) Terraform
3 59 (9.74%) Ansible
4 35 (5.78%) Puppet
5 26 (4.29%) Grafana
6 23 (3.80%) Prometheus
7 14 (2.31%) Progress Chef
8 9 (1.49%) Red Hat Satellite
8 9 (1.49%) Tivoli
9 8 (1.32%) CA Single Sign-On
9 8 (1.32%) CA Wily
9 8 (1.32%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 8 (1.32%) Packer
10 7 (1.16%) ITRS Geneos
10 7 (1.16%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (1.16%) Nessus
10 7 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.99%) Control-M
11 6 (0.99%) Kibana
11 6 (0.99%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 172 (28.38%) Oracle
2 102 (16.83%) Splunk
3 79 (13.04%) Microsoft
4 38 (6.27%) IBM
5 34 (5.61%) ServiceNow
6 31 (5.12%) VMware
7 28 (4.62%) Dynatrace
7 28 (4.62%) Red Hat
8 25 (4.13%) AppDynamics
9 20 (3.30%) Cisco
10 16 (2.64%) F5
11 15 (2.48%) CyberArk
12 13 (2.15%) Google
12 13 (2.15%) MuleSoft
13 11 (1.82%) SAP
14 10 (1.65%) webMethods
15 9 (1.49%) Tenable
15 9 (1.49%) TIBCO
16 8 (1.32%) Confluent
16 8 (1.32%) Okta