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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 222 166 128
Rank change year-on-year -56 -38 -41
Contract jobs citing Unix 600 508 766
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.65% 1.77%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.21% 12.02% 13.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 339 314 508
10th Percentile £304 £358 £334
25th Percentile £400 £408 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £486 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.21% -7.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £569 £600 £623
90th Percentile £660 £650 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £473 £450
% change year-on-year -2.86% +5.00% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 6 21
10th Percentile £21.50 £43.87 £22.30
25th Percentile £31.86 £52.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% +36.88% -37.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 -
90th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £54.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -13.17% +36.88% -32.85%

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 4,912 4,226 5,864
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.56% 13.74% 13.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,128 2,743 3,860
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +0.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 217 435
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.47 £22.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.32% -12.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £42.16 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £66.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £18.87 £31.25
% change year-on-year +37.78% -39.62% -6.72%

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 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -31 510 £475 - 114
UK excluding London -55 350 £459 -2.86% 74
London -74 191 £550 +10.00% 53
Work from Home -22 175 £470 +3.30% 52
North of England -30 115 £481 +7.16% 22
South East -23 107 £410 -25.45% 19
North West +6 87 £475 +12.16% 20
Midlands -5 81 £459 +2.00% 13
West Midlands +1 75 £459 -0.22% 12
Scotland -47 37 £425 -10.53% 1
Yorkshire -53 23 £500 -4.76% 2
East of England -25 10 £700 +55.56% 3
North East -26 7 £480 +28.00%
Wales -10 5 £265 -6.19% 5
East Midlands -14 5 £463 +18.29% 1
South West -38 5 £600 - 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 36 (6.00%) Confluence
2 26 (4.33%) SAS
3 18 (3.00%) Apache
4 16 (2.67%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.33%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (1.67%) CICS
6 10 (1.67%) WebLogic
7 7 (1.17%) NetWeaver
7 7 (1.17%) SharePoint
7 7 (1.17%) Tuxedo
8 6 (1.00%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.50%) IBM HTTP Server
10 3 (0.50%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.50%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.33%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.33%) IIS
11 2 (0.33%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.33%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (1.17%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.00%) Summit
3 2 (0.33%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 118 (19.67%) AWS
2 77 (12.83%) Azure
3 29 (4.83%) GitHub
4 25 (4.17%) GCP
5 24 (4.00%) Entra ID
6 23 (3.83%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (3.67%) Serverless
8 21 (3.50%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (3.33%) Amazon S3
10 18 (3.00%) OpenShift
11 17 (2.83%) IaaS
11 17 (2.83%) PaaS
12 16 (2.67%) SaaS
13 14 (2.33%) Power Platform
14 11 (1.83%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (1.67%) Snowflake
16 9 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
17 8 (1.33%) Azure Data Factory
17 8 (1.33%) Azure Key Vault
18 7 (1.17%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.17%) Firewall
2 25 (4.17%) DNS
3 21 (3.50%) SAN
4 17 (2.83%) TCP/IP
5 14 (2.33%) NAS
6 13 (2.17%) SSH
7 11 (1.83%) HTTP
8 9 (1.50%) SSL
9 8 (1.33%) Network Security
9 8 (1.33%) Wireless
9 8 (1.33%) Wireshark
10 7 (1.17%) 5G
10 7 (1.17%) FTP
10 7 (1.17%) PuTTY
10 7 (1.17%) VPN
10 7 (1.17%) WinSCP
11 6 (1.00%) DHCP
11 6 (1.00%) Ethernet
11 6 (1.00%) Internet
11 6 (1.00%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (12.17%) SQL Server
2 43 (7.17%) Relational Database
3 41 (6.83%) Oracle Database
4 35 (5.83%) MySQL
5 31 (5.17%) MongoDB
6 30 (5.00%) PostgreSQL
7 20 (3.33%) Data Warehouse
7 20 (3.33%) Db2
8 19 (3.17%) Metadata
9 17 (2.83%) KDB
10 16 (2.67%) Big Data
10 16 (2.67%) BusinessObjects
10 16 (2.67%) DataStage
11 15 (2.50%) NoSQL
12 14 (2.33%) Amazon Aurora
12 14 (2.33%) Kdb+
12 14 (2.33%) Power BI
12 14 (2.33%) Sybase ASE
13 11 (1.83%) Oracle Database 12c
14 10 (1.67%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 56 (9.33%) Jenkins
2 51 (8.50%) JIRA
3 50 (8.33%) GitLab
4 42 (7.00%) Git
5 23 (3.83%) Artifactory
6 15 (2.50%) Mockito
7 10 (1.67%) Bitbucket
8 9 (1.50%) Maven
9 7 (1.17%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.83%) Oracle Forms
11 4 (0.67%) CA Gen
11 4 (0.67%) JUnit
11 4 (0.67%) Selenium
11 4 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 3 (0.50%) Android Studio
12 3 (0.50%) Browser DevTools
12 3 (0.50%) Introscope
12 3 (0.50%) MSI
12 3 (0.50%) REST Assured
12 3 (0.50%) Xcode
General
1 152 (25.33%) Finance
2 127 (21.17%) Social Skills
3 92 (15.33%) Banking
4 78 (13.00%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (10.33%) Public Sector
6 28 (4.67%) Investment Banking
7 24 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (3.50%) Front Office
9 12 (2.00%) Retail
9 12 (2.00%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.83%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.50%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.00%) Advertising
12 6 (1.00%) Military
13 2 (0.33%) Billing
13 2 (0.33%) Law
13 2 (0.33%) Local Government
13 2 (0.33%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.17%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 114 (19.00%) Developer
2 77 (12.83%) Senior
3 65 (10.83%) Data Engineer
4 46 (7.67%) Unix Engineer
5 45 (7.50%) Java Developer
6 43 (7.17%) Support Engineer
7 39 (6.50%) Analyst
8 36 (6.00%) DBA
9 32 (5.33%) Senior Developer
10 25 (4.17%) Architect
11 24 (4.00%) Oracle DBA
11 24 (4.00%) Python Developer
12 21 (3.50%) Administrator
12 21 (3.50%) Consultant
13 19 (3.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 18 (3.00%) Senior Java Developer
14 18 (3.00%) Technical Support
15 17 (2.83%) Site Engineer
16 15 (2.50%) Applications Support
17 14 (2.33%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (9.17%) Kafka
2 36 (6.00%) REST
3 33 (5.50%) Middleware
4 26 (4.33%) RESTful
5 21 (3.50%) Spring
5 21 (3.50%) XML
6 20 (3.33%) Spring Boot
7 17 (2.83%) CSS
8 15 (2.50%) ActiveMQ
8 15 (2.50%) JAX-RS
8 15 (2.50%) Web Services
9 14 (2.33%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 13 (2.17%) HTML
10 13 (2.17%) LDAP
11 11 (1.83%) Pandas
11 11 (1.83%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (1.67%) JSON
13 9 (1.50%) .NET
13 9 (1.50%) Flask
13 9 (1.50%) React
Miscellaneous
1 43 (7.17%) Onboarding
2 36 (6.00%) Linux Command Line
3 30 (5.00%) Data Centre
3 30 (5.00%) Legacy Systems
4 25 (4.17%) Management Information System
5 20 (3.33%) Cloud Native
5 20 (3.33%) Mainframe
6 19 (3.17%) Replication
7 18 (3.00%) Derivative
8 17 (2.83%) Fixed Income
9 13 (2.17%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 12 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
10 12 (2.00%) Equities
11 11 (1.83%) Clustering
12 10 (1.67%) BYOD
12 10 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (1.67%) Public Cloud
12 10 (1.67%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.67%) VSAM
13 9 (1.50%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 398 (66.33%) Linux
2 158 (26.33%) Windows
3 54 (9.00%) Solaris
4 44 (7.33%) Windows Server
5 30 (5.00%) AIX
6 24 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (2.33%) Mac OS X
8 9 (1.50%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (1.17%) HPUX
10 6 (1.00%) SUSE
11 5 (0.83%) VMS
12 3 (0.50%) Android
12 3 (0.50%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.50%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.50%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.33%) CentOS
13 2 (0.33%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.33%) zOS
14 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (21.50%) Agile
2 120 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 109 (18.17%) Problem-Solving
4 92 (15.33%) Migration
5 81 (13.50%) High Availability
6 77 (12.83%) DevOps
6 77 (12.83%) ITIL
7 68 (11.33%) Test Automation
8 61 (10.17%) Root Cause Analysis
9 55 (9.17%) Performance Tuning
10 53 (8.83%) Disaster Recovery
11 52 (8.67%) Runbook
12 50 (8.33%) Microservices
13 48 (8.00%) Observability
14 47 (7.83%) Analytics
14 47 (7.83%) Change Management
15 46 (7.67%) Data Modelling
15 46 (7.67%) Incident Management
16 42 (7.00%) SIEM
17 41 (6.83%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 226 (37.67%) SQL
2 223 (37.17%) Python
3 112 (18.67%) Java
4 110 (18.33%) Shell Script
5 72 (12.00%) PL/SQL
6 53 (8.83%) PowerShell
7 52 (8.67%) Bash
8 35 (5.83%) JavaScript
8 35 (5.83%) Perl
9 25 (4.17%) C#
10 21 (3.50%) C++
11 17 (2.83%) Korn
12 12 (2.00%) COBOL
13 8 (1.33%) Scala
14 7 (1.17%) C
15 5 (0.83%) Go
15 5 (0.83%) ProC
16 4 (0.67%) Kotlin
16 4 (0.67%) Ruby
16 4 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 198 (33.00%) Security Cleared
2 167 (27.83%) SC Cleared
3 70 (11.67%) Degree
4 32 (5.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.17%) CISSP
5 19 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (1.83%) CompTIA Security+
6 11 (1.83%) DV Cleared
7 9 (1.50%) CISM
8 7 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (1.17%) CRISC
9 6 (1.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 6 (1.00%) CESG Certified Professional
9 6 (1.00%) GIAC
9 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.00%) RHCE
10 5 (0.83%) MCSA
10 5 (0.83%) MCSE
10 5 (0.83%) SANS
11 4 (0.67%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (6.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 38 (6.33%) NIST
2 23 (3.83%) QA
3 16 (2.67%) SLA
4 11 (1.83%) Data Quality
5 7 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (1.00%) ISO 31000
7 5 (0.83%) GRC
8 4 (0.67%) ISO 20022
8 4 (0.67%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.67%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.50%) FATCA
10 2 (0.33%) GDPR
10 2 (0.33%) GMP
10 2 (0.33%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.33%) NCSC
11 1 (0.17%) ISO 8583
11 1 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 54 (9.00%) Docker
2 45 (7.50%) Active Directory
3 21 (3.50%) Oracle RAC
4 18 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
5 17 (2.83%) NFS
6 11 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.17%) GPFS
8 6 (1.00%) Hyper-V
8 6 (1.00%) KVM
8 6 (1.00%) Postfix
8 6 (1.00%) Varnish
8 6 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.83%) vSphere
10 4 (0.67%) HDFS
10 4 (0.67%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.50%) Firmware
11 3 (0.50%) GridGain
11 3 (0.50%) PowerHA
11 3 (0.50%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 2 (0.33%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 68 (11.33%) Kubernetes
2 60 (10.00%) Ansible
3 37 (6.17%) Terraform
4 36 (6.00%) Grafana
5 31 (5.17%) Oracle RMAN
6 25 (4.17%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.50%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 14 (2.33%) Data Guard
9 9 (1.50%) Kibana
9 9 (1.50%) Progress Chef
9 9 (1.50%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.33%) NetBackup
10 8 (1.33%) Puppet
11 7 (1.17%) Control-M
12 6 (1.00%) HAProxy
12 6 (1.00%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.00%) Nessus
12 6 (1.00%) Tivoli
12 6 (1.00%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.83%) VxRail
Vendors
1 236 (39.33%) Oracle
2 47 (7.83%) IBM
3 45 (7.50%) Splunk
4 39 (6.50%) BeyondTrust
4 39 (6.50%) Microsoft
5 38 (6.33%) CyberArk
6 34 (5.67%) Talend
7 27 (4.50%) ServiceNow
7 27 (4.50%) Sybase
7 27 (4.50%) VMware
8 26 (4.33%) Informatica
9 21 (3.50%) Denodo
10 19 (3.17%) Cisco
11 17 (2.83%) Red Hat
12 15 (2.50%) Dynatrace
13 13 (2.17%) SAP
14 11 (1.83%) BT
14 11 (1.83%) CheckPoint
15 10 (1.67%) Veritas
16 9 (1.50%) Murex