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 18 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 134 144
Rank change year-on-year -87 +10 -63
Contract jobs citing Unix 512 597 751
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 2.04% 1.69%
As % of the Operating Systems category 10.82% 14.17% 12.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 336 351 509
10th Percentile £257 £356 £330
25th Percentile £392 £421 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.55% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £565 £628 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £429 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -9.68% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 9 22
10th Percentile - £39.60 £22.01
25th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £27.88 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.90% +31.25% -37.98%
75th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £53.95 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -58.29% +31.88% -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 4,731 4,213 6,024
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.93% 14.37% 13.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,099 2,774 4,024
10th Percentile £180 £200 £181
25th Percentile £290 £320 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £456
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +4.17% -11.46%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £658 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £450 £430
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.65% -9.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 349 157 404
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.40 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.79 £27.50 £22.40
Median % change year-on-year -17.15% +22.77% -15.44%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £59.63
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £22.50
% change year-on-year -8.76% +9.60% -13.46%

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 18 March 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 18 March 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 18 March 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 -76 444 £461 -12.14% 91
UK excluding London -81 263 £429 -9.68% 68
London -46 208 £539 -4.22% 41
Work from Home -95 146 £452 -8.78% 69
North of England -48 86 £464 -11.67% 21
North West -6 67 £467 -11.05% 12
Midlands -31 67 £444 -3.59% 11
South East -33 67 £320 -33.33% 18
West Midlands -25 63 £444 -4.52% 7
Scotland -44 29 £420 -9.58% 4
Yorkshire -72 18 £460 -16.36% 5
South West -32 8 £700 +27.27% 4
Wales -4 5 £265 +62.04% 2
East Midlands -41 4 £478 +13.02% 4
East of England -36 3 £440 -2.22% 4
North East -12 2 £563 - 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 23 (4.49%) Confluence
2 22 (4.30%) WebLogic
3 21 (4.10%) Apache
4 16 (3.13%) Tuxedo
5 15 (2.93%) SharePoint
6 12 (2.34%) Apache Spark
7 11 (2.15%) SAS
8 8 (1.56%) CICS
9 6 (1.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.98%) JBoss
10 5 (0.98%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.98%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.78%) nginx
11 4 (0.78%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.59%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.39%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.39%) IBM HTTP Server
13 2 (0.39%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 12 (2.34%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.20%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.17%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.17%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.98%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.78%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.59%) Oracle BRM
4 3 (0.59%) Summit
5 2 (0.39%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.39%) Kondor
5 2 (0.39%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 96 (18.75%) AWS
2 72 (14.06%) Azure
3 27 (5.27%) GitHub
4 15 (2.93%) GCP
4 15 (2.93%) SaaS
5 14 (2.73%) AWS CloudFormation
6 13 (2.54%) Serverless
7 11 (2.15%) Amazon S3
7 11 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
7 11 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (1.95%) Sauce Labs
9 9 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 9 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
9 9 (1.76%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (1.76%) OpenShift
10 8 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
10 8 (1.56%) Entra ID
10 8 (1.56%) Power Platform
11 7 (1.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 7 (1.37%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 32 (6.25%) Firewall
2 16 (3.13%) DNS
3 15 (2.93%) SSH
4 14 (2.73%) Wireless
5 13 (2.54%) SAN
6 12 (2.34%) HTTP
6 12 (2.34%) TCP/IP
7 11 (2.15%) Network Security
8 8 (1.56%) InfiniBand
8 8 (1.56%) NAS
9 7 (1.37%) Ethernet
9 7 (1.37%) NetScaler
10 6 (1.17%) VPN
11 5 (0.98%) Ethernet VPN
11 5 (0.98%) FTP
11 5 (0.98%) RTP
11 5 (0.98%) SSL
12 4 (0.78%) FIX Connectivity
12 4 (0.78%) MPLS
13 3 (0.59%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (9.38%) MySQL
2 41 (8.01%) Relational Database
2 41 (8.01%) SQL Server
3 39 (7.62%) Oracle Database
4 37 (7.23%) MongoDB
5 28 (5.47%) PostgreSQL
6 20 (3.91%) NoSQL
7 18 (3.52%) KDB
7 18 (3.52%) Kdb+
8 14 (2.73%) Big Data
9 13 (2.54%) Elasticsearch
10 12 (2.34%) Data Warehouse
10 12 (2.34%) Metadata
11 11 (2.15%) Data Lake
11 11 (2.15%) Hadoop
11 11 (2.15%) Tick Data
12 9 (1.76%) DataStage
12 9 (1.76%) DB2
13 8 (1.56%) Pentaho
14 7 (1.37%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 45 (8.79%) Jenkins
2 39 (7.62%) Git
2 39 (7.62%) JIRA
3 37 (7.23%) GitLab
4 14 (2.73%) Eclipse
4 14 (2.73%) JUnit
5 12 (2.34%) Bitbucket
5 12 (2.34%) Mockito
6 11 (2.15%) MSI
6 11 (2.15%) Xcode
7 10 (1.95%) Android Studio
7 10 (1.95%) Browser DevTools
8 9 (1.76%) Selenium
9 7 (1.37%) Maven
10 5 (0.98%) SoapUI
10 5 (0.98%) Toad
11 4 (0.78%) CA Gen
11 4 (0.78%) Cucumber
11 4 (0.78%) ScriptRunner
11 4 (0.78%) Subversion
General
1 140 (27.34%) Finance
2 132 (25.78%) Social Skills
3 59 (11.52%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (11.33%) Banking
5 45 (8.79%) Public Sector
6 22 (4.30%) Front Office
7 17 (3.32%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (1.76%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.37%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.17%) Advertising
11 6 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.98%) Law
12 5 (0.98%) Legal
13 4 (0.78%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.78%) Retail
14 3 (0.59%) Billing
14 3 (0.59%) Military
14 3 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 94 (18.36%) Developer
2 71 (13.87%) Senior
3 44 (8.59%) Analyst
4 35 (6.84%) Java Developer
5 34 (6.64%) Support Engineer
6 33 (6.45%) Unix Engineer
7 27 (5.27%) Technical Support
8 26 (5.08%) Linux Engineer
8 26 (5.08%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 23 (4.49%) Data Engineer
9 23 (4.49%) DBA
10 22 (4.30%) Oracle DBA
10 22 (4.30%) Site Engineer
11 21 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
12 20 (3.91%) Software Engineer
13 18 (3.52%) Administrator
13 18 (3.52%) Kafka Engineer
13 18 (3.52%) Lead
13 18 (3.52%) Unix Linux Engineer
14 16 (3.13%) Senior Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (11.91%) Kafka
2 34 (6.64%) REST
3 26 (5.08%) XML
4 25 (4.88%) Middleware
5 22 (4.30%) React
6 21 (4.10%) SOAP
7 19 (3.71%) JSON
8 17 (3.32%) CSS
9 16 (3.13%) AngularJS
10 15 (2.93%) Spring
11 14 (2.73%) Elastic Stack
12 13 (2.54%) Oracle GoldenGate
13 12 (2.34%) HTML
14 11 (2.15%) ActiveMQ
14 11 (2.15%) JAX-RS
15 10 (1.95%) Ajax
15 10 (1.95%) FIX Protocol
15 10 (1.95%) GraphQL
15 10 (1.95%) Spring Boot
16 9 (1.76%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 28 (5.47%) Management Information System
2 21 (4.10%) Cloud Native
3 20 (3.91%) Linux Command Line
3 20 (3.91%) Onboarding
4 18 (3.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 16 (3.13%) Data Centre
6 15 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (2.34%) Equities
7 12 (2.34%) Fixed Income
8 11 (2.15%) Derivative
8 11 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
9 10 (1.95%) Algorithms
9 10 (1.95%) Mobile App
9 10 (1.95%) Security Posture
10 9 (1.76%) Mainframe
10 9 (1.76%) Public Cloud
11 8 (1.56%) BYOD
11 8 (1.56%) Enterprise Cloud
11 8 (1.56%) VSAM
12 7 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 329 (64.26%) Linux
2 157 (30.66%) Windows
3 29 (5.66%) Windows Server
4 24 (4.69%) Solaris
5 23 (4.49%) AIX
6 21 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.54%) Mac OS X
8 10 (1.95%) Android
9 6 (1.17%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.59%) CentOS
11 2 (0.39%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.39%) VMS
12 1 (0.20%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.20%) Rocky
12 1 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.20%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.20%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.20%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (26.95%) Agile
2 104 (20.31%) Problem-Solving
3 90 (17.58%) DevOps
4 79 (15.43%) CI/CD
5 56 (10.94%) Migration
5 56 (10.94%) Observability
6 54 (10.55%) Computer Science
7 52 (10.16%) ITIL
8 49 (9.57%) Software Engineering
9 48 (9.38%) Incident Response
10 45 (8.79%) Data Modelling
11 44 (8.59%) Containerisation
11 44 (8.59%) Microservices
11 44 (8.59%) OO
12 43 (8.40%) Performance Tuning
13 41 (8.01%) Infrastructure as Code
14 40 (7.81%) Analytics
14 40 (7.81%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 39 (7.62%) Change Management
15 39 (7.62%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 197 (38.48%) SQL
2 180 (35.16%) Python
3 128 (25.00%) Java
4 95 (18.55%) Shell Script
5 63 (12.30%) Bash
6 59 (11.52%) Perl
7 37 (7.23%) C++
7 37 (7.23%) JavaScript
8 36 (7.03%) PowerShell
9 33 (6.45%) PL/SQL
10 26 (5.08%) C#
11 24 (4.69%) Korn
12 10 (1.95%) PHP
13 9 (1.76%) Go
13 9 (1.76%) Scala
14 8 (1.56%) COBOL
15 3 (0.59%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.39%) PromQL
16 2 (0.39%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 127 (24.80%) Security Cleared
2 98 (19.14%) SC Cleared
3 74 (14.45%) Degree
4 40 (7.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (3.71%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.56%) CISSP
7 6 (1.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 6 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.17%) OSCP
8 5 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
8 5 (0.98%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.98%) GPEN
8 5 (0.98%) GWAPT
8 5 (0.98%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.98%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (0.98%) MCSA
8 5 (0.98%) MCSE
9 4 (0.78%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.59%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.52%) SLA
2 16 (3.13%) QA
3 13 (2.54%) Data Quality
4 9 (1.76%) NIST
5 7 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.59%) FATCA
6 3 (0.59%) GMP
6 3 (0.59%) SEPA
7 2 (0.39%) GDPR
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.39%) NCSC
7 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.20%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 64 (12.50%) Docker
2 16 (3.13%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.73%) Oracle RAC
4 9 (1.76%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.37%) KVM
6 6 (1.17%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.17%) NFS
6 6 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.98%) GPFS
8 4 (0.78%) HDFS
9 3 (0.59%) Firmware
9 3 (0.59%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.59%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.39%) Postfix
10 2 (0.39%) SRDF
10 2 (0.39%) Varnish
10 2 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.39%) vSphere
11 1 (0.20%) Ceph
11 1 (0.20%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 70 (13.67%) Kubernetes
2 62 (12.11%) Ansible
3 49 (9.57%) Terraform
4 39 (7.62%) Grafana
5 23 (4.49%) Prometheus
6 22 (4.30%) Puppet
7 16 (3.13%) Oracle RMAN
8 15 (2.93%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 12 (2.34%) Kibana
10 7 (1.37%) NetBackup
11 6 (1.17%) Control-M
11 6 (1.17%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.17%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.17%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (1.17%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.98%) CASB
12 5 (0.98%) Dell DRAC
12 5 (0.98%) Nessus
12 5 (0.98%) Salt
12 5 (0.98%) SCCM
Vendors
1 162 (31.64%) Oracle
2 62 (12.11%) Splunk
3 53 (10.35%) Microsoft
4 42 (8.20%) IBM
5 30 (5.86%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.52%) VMware
7 16 (3.13%) Cisco
8 14 (2.73%) Red Hat
9 12 (2.34%) CyberArk
10 11 (2.15%) Talend
11 10 (1.95%) Informatica
11 10 (1.95%) Remedy
12 9 (1.76%) Fujitsu
13 8 (1.56%) Aruba
13 8 (1.56%) Dell
13 8 (1.56%) Sybase
13 8 (1.56%) Veritas
14 7 (1.37%) Ab Initio
14 7 (1.37%) AppDynamics
14 7 (1.37%) CheckPoint