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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 212 168 130
Rank change year-on-year -44 -38 -45
Contract jobs citing Unix 595 502 773
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.68% 1.76%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.31% 12.06% 13.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 346 307 518
10th Percentile £304 £358 £334
25th Percentile £403 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.11% -9.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £563 £591 £625
90th Percentile £657 £638 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £467 £450
% change year-on-year -1.71% +3.78% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 5 21
10th Percentile £21.50 £42.39 £22.30
25th Percentile £31.86 £51.25 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +37.50% -37.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 - -
90th Percentile £55.00 £64.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £55.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -13.56% +37.50% -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 4,835 4,163 5,888
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.55% 13.94% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,095 2,720 3,881
10th Percentile £190 £200 £188
25th Percentile £317 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £581 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 206 428
10th Percentile £14.60 £15.42 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.44 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.24 £21.95 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +37.77% -9.22% -44.96%
75th Percentile £64.06 £40.31 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.20 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.88 £18.87 £25.25
% change year-on-year +47.75% -25.27% -32.67%

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 20 June 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 20 June 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 20 June 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 -31 503 £475 -0.11% 73
UK excluding London -56 352 £459 -1.71% 56
London -75 184 £550 +10.00% 34
Work from Home -28 172 £470 +4.44% 41
North of England -30 113 £481 +10.38% 18
South East -20 107 £392 -28.73% 16
North West -2 85 £481 +16.24% 13
Midlands -8 83 £459 +0.88% 4
West Midlands -6 78 £459 -0.22% 2
Scotland -46 39 £425 -10.53% 2
Yorkshire -62 23 £483 -6.99% 4
East of England -35 10 £700 +55.56% 4
North East -31 5 £480 +28.00% 1
South West -36 5 £600 - 8
Wales -11 4 - - 4
East Midlands -20 4 £494 +26.28% 2

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 (5.71%) Confluence
2 26 (4.37%) SAS
3 18 (3.03%) Apache
4 16 (2.69%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (1.68%) CICS
6 10 (1.68%) WebLogic
7 7 (1.18%) NetWeaver
7 7 (1.18%) Tuxedo
8 6 (1.01%) OpenStack
8 6 (1.01%) SharePoint
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 (0.34%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Spatial
11 2 (0.34%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (1.18%) Notepad++
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (1.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.01%) Summit
3 2 (0.34%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 113 (18.99%) AWS
2 73 (12.27%) Azure
3 29 (4.87%) GitHub
4 25 (4.20%) GCP
5 24 (4.03%) Entra ID
6 23 (3.87%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (3.70%) Serverless
8 20 (3.36%) Amazon S3
8 20 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
9 18 (3.03%) OpenShift
10 15 (2.52%) IaaS
10 15 (2.52%) PaaS
11 14 (2.35%) Power Platform
11 14 (2.35%) SaaS
12 11 (1.85%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (1.68%) Snowflake
14 9 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
15 8 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
16 7 (1.18%) Amazon ECS
16 7 (1.18%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 29 (4.87%) Firewall
2 24 (4.03%) DNS
3 20 (3.36%) SAN
4 15 (2.52%) TCP/IP
5 13 (2.18%) NAS
6 11 (1.85%) SSH
7 10 (1.68%) HTTP
8 8 (1.34%) Network Security
8 8 (1.34%) SSL
8 8 (1.34%) Wireless
8 8 (1.34%) Wireshark
9 7 (1.18%) 5G
9 7 (1.18%) FTP
9 7 (1.18%) PuTTY
9 7 (1.18%) WinSCP
10 6 (1.01%) Diameter Protocol
10 6 (1.01%) Ethernet
10 6 (1.01%) InfiniBand
10 6 (1.01%) VoWiFi
10 6 (1.01%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (11.93%) SQL Server
2 42 (7.06%) Relational Database
3 40 (6.72%) Oracle Database
4 35 (5.88%) MySQL
5 31 (5.21%) PostgreSQL
6 28 (4.71%) MongoDB
7 20 (3.36%) Data Warehouse
8 19 (3.19%) Metadata
9 16 (2.69%) Big Data
9 16 (2.69%) BusinessObjects
9 16 (2.69%) DataStage
9 16 (2.69%) Db2
10 15 (2.52%) KDB
11 14 (2.35%) Amazon Aurora
11 14 (2.35%) NoSQL
11 14 (2.35%) Power BI
12 13 (2.18%) Kdb+
13 12 (2.02%) Sybase ASE
14 11 (1.85%) Data Lake
14 11 (1.85%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 57 (9.58%) Jenkins
2 52 (8.74%) GitLab
3 49 (8.24%) JIRA
4 46 (7.73%) Git
5 22 (3.70%) Artifactory
6 11 (1.85%) Mockito
7 9 (1.51%) Bitbucket
7 9 (1.51%) Maven
8 7 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.84%) Oracle Forms
10 4 (0.67%) CA Gen
10 4 (0.67%) JUnit
10 4 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 3 (0.50%) Android Studio
11 3 (0.50%) Browser DevTools
11 3 (0.50%) Eclipse
11 3 (0.50%) Introscope
11 3 (0.50%) MSI
11 3 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 3 (0.50%) Xcode
General
1 147 (24.71%) Finance
2 122 (20.50%) Social Skills
3 89 (14.96%) Banking
4 77 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
5 59 (9.92%) Public Sector
6 26 (4.37%) Investment Banking
7 24 (4.03%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (3.36%) Front Office
9 11 (1.85%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.68%) Retail
11 9 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.34%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.01%) Advertising
13 6 (1.01%) Military
14 2 (0.34%) Billing
14 2 (0.34%) Law
14 2 (0.34%) Local Government
14 2 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.17%) International Banking
Job Titles
1 103 (17.31%) Developer
2 77 (12.94%) Senior
3 65 (10.92%) Data Engineer
4 51 (8.57%) Unix Engineer
5 44 (7.39%) Analyst
6 41 (6.89%) Support Engineer
7 40 (6.72%) Java Developer
8 34 (5.71%) DBA
9 28 (4.71%) Senior Developer
10 25 (4.20%) Architect
11 24 (4.03%) Oracle DBA
12 23 (3.87%) Administrator
12 23 (3.87%) Python Developer
13 20 (3.36%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 19 (3.19%) Consultant
14 19 (3.19%) Technical Support
15 18 (3.03%) Site Engineer
16 15 (2.52%) DevOps Engineer
16 15 (2.52%) Linux Engineer
16 15 (2.52%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (8.57%) Kafka
2 37 (6.22%) REST
3 28 (4.71%) Middleware
4 26 (4.37%) RESTful
5 21 (3.53%) Spring
5 21 (3.53%) Spring Boot
6 19 (3.19%) XML
7 17 (2.86%) CSS
8 14 (2.35%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 14 (2.35%) Web Services
9 13 (2.18%) HTML
10 11 (1.85%) ActiveMQ
10 11 (1.85%) JAX-RS
10 11 (1.85%) LDAP
10 11 (1.85%) Pandas
10 11 (1.85%) RabbitMQ
11 10 (1.68%) JSON
12 9 (1.51%) FastAPI
12 9 (1.51%) Flask
12 9 (1.51%) React
Miscellaneous
1 45 (7.56%) Onboarding
2 37 (6.22%) Linux Command Line
3 30 (5.04%) Legacy Systems
4 26 (4.37%) Management Information System
5 24 (4.03%) Data Centre
6 19 (3.19%) Cloud Native
7 18 (3.03%) Mainframe
8 17 (2.86%) Replication
9 16 (2.69%) Derivative
10 14 (2.35%) Fixed Income
11 11 (1.85%) Clustering
11 11 (1.85%) Public Cloud
12 10 (1.68%) BYOD
12 10 (1.68%) Equities
12 10 (1.68%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.68%) VSAM
13 9 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 9 (1.51%) Market Risk
14 8 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 389 (65.38%) Linux
2 156 (26.22%) Windows
3 57 (9.58%) Solaris
4 43 (7.23%) Windows Server
5 30 (5.04%) AIX
6 23 (3.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (2.02%) Mac OS X
8 9 (1.51%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (1.18%) HPUX
10 6 (1.01%) SUSE
11 5 (0.84%) Mac OS
12 4 (0.67%) VMS
13 3 (0.50%) Android
13 3 (0.50%) Check Point GAiA
14 2 (0.34%) CentOS
14 2 (0.34%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
14 2 (0.34%) zOS
15 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (21.34%) Agile
2 119 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 104 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
4 96 (16.13%) Migration
5 80 (13.45%) DevOps
6 75 (12.61%) High Availability
7 72 (12.10%) ITIL
8 62 (10.42%) Test Automation
9 58 (9.75%) Root Cause Analysis
10 56 (9.41%) Disaster Recovery
11 53 (8.91%) Performance Tuning
12 52 (8.74%) Observability
13 51 (8.57%) Runbook
14 48 (8.07%) Data Modelling
14 48 (8.07%) Incident Management
15 46 (7.73%) Microservices
16 45 (7.56%) Analytics
16 45 (7.56%) Change Management
17 42 (7.06%) Computer Science
18 41 (6.89%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 225 (37.82%) SQL
2 220 (36.97%) Python
3 108 (18.15%) Java
4 105 (17.65%) Shell Script
5 70 (11.76%) PL/SQL
6 55 (9.24%) PowerShell
7 52 (8.74%) Bash
8 38 (6.39%) Perl
9 36 (6.05%) JavaScript
10 24 (4.03%) C#
11 23 (3.87%) C++
12 15 (2.52%) Korn
13 12 (2.02%) COBOL
14 8 (1.34%) Scala
15 6 (1.01%) C
16 4 (0.67%) Kotlin
16 4 (0.67%) ProC
16 4 (0.67%) Ruby
16 4 (0.67%) T-SQL
17 3 (0.50%) R
Qualifications
1 200 (33.61%) Security Cleared
2 168 (28.24%) SC Cleared
3 71 (11.93%) Degree
4 31 (5.21%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (3.19%) CISSP
7 11 (1.85%) CompTIA Security+
8 10 (1.68%) DV Cleared
9 9 (1.51%) CISM
10 7 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.18%) CRISC
11 6 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (1.01%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.01%) GIAC
11 6 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (1.01%) RHCE
12 5 (0.84%) MCSA
12 5 (0.84%) MCSE
12 5 (0.84%) SANS
13 4 (0.67%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (6.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 36 (6.05%) NIST
3 19 (3.19%) QA
4 18 (3.03%) SLA
5 11 (1.85%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (1.01%) ISO 31000
8 5 (0.84%) GRC
9 4 (0.67%) ISO 20022
9 4 (0.67%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.50%) FATCA
10 3 (0.50%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.34%) GDPR
11 2 (0.34%) GMP
11 2 (0.34%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.34%) NCSC
12 1 (0.17%) MIL-STD-1553
12 1 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 57 (9.58%) Docker
2 42 (7.06%) Active Directory
3 21 (3.53%) Oracle RAC
4 18 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
5 16 (2.69%) NFS
6 11 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (1.34%) GPFS
8 6 (1.01%) Hyper-V
8 6 (1.01%) KVM
8 6 (1.01%) Postfix
8 6 (1.01%) Varnish
8 6 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.84%) 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 (0.34%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 71 (11.93%) Kubernetes
2 61 (10.25%) Ansible
3 38 (6.39%) Grafana
4 36 (6.05%) Terraform
5 31 (5.21%) Oracle RMAN
6 25 (4.20%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.52%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 14 (2.35%) Data Guard
9 11 (1.85%) Kibana
10 10 (1.68%) NetBackup
10 10 (1.68%) Puppet
11 9 (1.51%) Progress Chef
11 9 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.01%) Control-M
12 6 (1.01%) HAProxy
12 6 (1.01%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.01%) Nessus
12 6 (1.01%) Tivoli
12 6 (1.01%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.84%) vRealize
Vendors
1 237 (39.83%) Oracle
2 46 (7.73%) IBM
2 46 (7.73%) Splunk
3 39 (6.55%) Microsoft
4 37 (6.22%) CyberArk
5 36 (6.05%) BeyondTrust
6 34 (5.71%) Talend
7 28 (4.71%) ServiceNow
8 27 (4.54%) VMware
9 26 (4.37%) Informatica
10 22 (3.70%) Sybase
11 21 (3.53%) Cisco
11 21 (3.53%) Denodo
12 16 (2.69%) Red Hat
13 14 (2.35%) Dynatrace
14 13 (2.18%) SAP
15 12 (2.02%) Veritas
16 11 (1.85%) CheckPoint
17 10 (1.68%) BT
18 9 (1.51%) Murex