Unix Contracts

Unix
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Unix skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Unix over the 6 months leading up to 1 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 169 128 87
Rank change year-on-year -41 -41 +17
Contract jobs citing Unix 508 766 1,486
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.65% 1.77% 2.66%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.02% 13.06% 16.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 314 508 991
10th Percentile £358 £334 £400
25th Percentile £408 £409 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.48% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £623 £650
90th Percentile £650 £750 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £450 £540
% change year-on-year +5.00% -16.67% +8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 21 23
10th Percentile £43.87 £22.30 £48.68
25th Percentile £52.00 £23.80 £53.75
Median hourly rate £54.75 £40.00 £64.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.88% -37.50% -5.88%
75th Percentile £55.00 - £73.75
90th Percentile £62.50 £65.00 £75.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.75 £40.00 £59.57
% change year-on-year +36.88% -32.85% -22.13%

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 4,228 5,864 8,885
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.72% 13.59% 15.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,744 3,860 6,147
10th Percentile £200 £190 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £580 £588 £638
90th Percentile £675 £700 £717
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £462
% change year-on-year -2.70% +0.13% +8.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 217 435 407
10th Percentile £15.50 £12.75 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.44 £16.25 £18.44
Median hourly rate £22.00 £25.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -41.18% +88.89%
75th Percentile £42.16 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.20 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £31.25 £33.50
% change year-on-year -39.62% -6.72% +67.50%

Unix
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Unix as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Unix in the UK

Unix
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Unix.

Daily rate trend for Unix in the UK

Unix
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Unix over the 6 months to 1 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Unix in the UK

Unix
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Unix.

Hourly rate trend for Unix in the UK

Unix
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Unix over the 6 months to 1 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Unix in the UK

Unix
Top 17 Contract 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 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 -55 387 £475 -9.52% 1,046
UK excluding London +7 282 £473 +5.00% 438
London -43 195 £500 -11.66% 688
Work from Home -36 144 £455 -13.33% 367
Scotland +17 91 £475 +24.18% 45
North of England +15 66 £449 -11.58% 76
South East +6 60 £550 +29.41% 115
North West +17 39 £424 -19.94% 37
Midlands -12 27 £450 -14.29% 49
Yorkshire +2 26 £525 +20.69% 29
West Midlands -24 20 £460 -14.42% 32
East of England +17 14 £450 - 63
South West +16 13 £600 +33.33% 50
Northern Ireland - 10 £410 - 27
East Midlands +9 7 £391 -21.80% 17
Wales +4 2 £283 -52.32% 19
North East -2 1 £375 - 10

Unix
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 22 (4.33%) Confluence
2 14 (2.76%) Tomcat
3 13 (2.56%) Apache
4 12 (2.36%) Apache Spark
4 12 (2.36%) JBoss
4 12 (2.36%) Oracle Workflow
5 11 (2.17%) WebSphere
6 9 (1.77%) WebLogic
7 7 (1.38%) NetWeaver
7 7 (1.38%) SAS
8 6 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
8 6 (1.18%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (1.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (1.18%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.79%) CMS
9 4 (0.79%) Drupal
9 4 (0.79%) WordPress
10 3 (0.59%) CICS
11 2 (0.39%) MQSeries
11 2 (0.39%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 14 (2.76%) MS Visio
2 10 (1.97%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 15 (2.95%) Kondor
2 11 (2.17%) Oracle EBS
3 9 (1.77%) Oracle EBS R12
4 7 (1.38%) SAP IBP
5 4 (0.79%) Oracle Assets
5 4 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
5 4 (0.79%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.59%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.59%) Oracle Applications
7 2 (0.39%) ION MarketView
7 2 (0.39%) Oracle BPM
7 2 (0.39%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
8 1 (0.20%) Remedy AR System
8 1 (0.20%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.20%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 103 (20.28%) AWS
2 77 (15.16%) Azure
3 39 (7.68%) GCP
4 26 (5.12%) GitHub
4 26 (5.12%) OpenShift
5 14 (2.76%) IaaS
6 13 (2.56%) Amazon S3
6 13 (2.56%) Cloud Computing
7 11 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
8 8 (1.57%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (1.57%) Serverless
9 7 (1.38%) Cohesity
9 7 (1.38%) SaaS
10 6 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
11 5 (0.98%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (0.98%) Entra ID
11 5 (0.98%) OCI
11 5 (0.98%) PaaS
11 5 (0.98%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 42 (8.27%) SAN
2 25 (4.92%) Firewall
2 25 (4.92%) VPN
3 23 (4.53%) TCP/IP
4 21 (4.13%) DNS
5 18 (3.54%) HTTP
5 18 (3.54%) LAN
6 16 (3.15%) Internet
6 16 (3.15%) MPLS
7 15 (2.95%) WAN
7 15 (2.95%) Wireshark
8 14 (2.76%) ATM
8 14 (2.76%) Ethernet
8 14 (2.76%) Frame Relay
8 14 (2.76%) GPRS
8 14 (2.76%) GSM
8 14 (2.76%) LTE
8 14 (2.76%) SDH
8 14 (2.76%) UMTS
9 12 (2.36%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (9.84%) Relational Database
2 32 (6.30%) SQL Server
3 27 (5.31%) DB2
3 27 (5.31%) Oracle Database
4 23 (4.53%) RDBMS
5 20 (3.94%) MongoDB
6 16 (3.15%) Big Data
7 15 (2.95%) Oracle Reports
8 14 (2.76%) MySQL
9 13 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
10 9 (1.77%) BigQuery
10 9 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
10 9 (1.77%) KDB
10 9 (1.77%) Metadata
11 8 (1.57%) Hadoop
11 8 (1.57%) NoSQL
12 7 (1.38%) MS Access
12 7 (1.38%) Oracle Database 10g
12 7 (1.38%) SAP BW
12 7 (1.38%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 93 (18.31%) Git
2 72 (14.17%) Jenkins
3 50 (9.84%) JIRA
4 27 (5.31%) GitLab
4 27 (5.31%) Maven
5 26 (5.12%) JUnit
6 18 (3.54%) Sonatype Nexus
7 16 (3.15%) Gradle
7 16 (3.15%) Toad
8 15 (2.95%) Bitbucket
9 11 (2.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 11 (2.17%) SonarQube
9 11 (2.17%) TeamCity
10 10 (1.97%) Subversion
11 9 (1.77%) Bitbucket Server
12 8 (1.57%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (1.38%) IntelliJ
13 7 (1.38%) Postman
13 7 (1.38%) SoapUI
14 6 (1.18%) Ant
General
1 189 (37.20%) Social Skills
2 132 (25.98%) Finance
3 91 (17.91%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (14.96%) Banking
5 22 (4.33%) Public Sector
6 21 (4.13%) Financial Institution
6 21 (4.13%) Front Office
6 21 (4.13%) Telecoms
7 17 (3.35%) Investment Banking
8 10 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (1.38%) Legal
10 6 (1.18%) General Ledger
10 6 (1.18%) Retail Banking
11 5 (0.98%) Back Office
11 5 (0.98%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.59%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.59%) Automotive
13 3 (0.59%) Law
13 3 (0.59%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 107 (21.06%) Developer
2 47 (9.25%) Java Developer
3 45 (8.86%) Senior
4 33 (6.50%) Architect
5 32 (6.30%) Analyst
6 31 (6.10%) Linux Engineer
7 28 (5.51%) Administrator
8 23 (4.53%) Applications Support
9 20 (3.94%) Consultant
9 20 (3.94%) Network Engineer
10 19 (3.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 19 (3.74%) Support Engineer
11 17 (3.35%) Lead
12 16 (3.15%) Systems Engineer
13 15 (2.95%) Data Engineer
13 15 (2.95%) FPGA Engineer
13 15 (2.95%) Python Engineer
14 14 (2.76%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.76%) Infrastructure Architect
14 14 (2.76%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (8.27%) Middleware
2 35 (6.89%) SOAP
2 35 (6.89%) Spring
3 29 (5.71%) REST
4 28 (5.51%) Kafka
4 28 (5.51%) Spring Boot
4 28 (5.51%) Web Services
5 26 (5.12%) XML
6 20 (3.94%) AngularJS
7 19 (3.74%) HTML
7 19 (3.74%) RESTful
8 15 (2.95%) J2EE
9 13 (2.56%) JSON
10 11 (2.17%) CSS
11 10 (1.97%) Spring Cloud
12 9 (1.77%) .NET
12 9 (1.77%) LDAP
12 9 (1.77%) React
13 8 (1.57%) Loki
14 7 (1.38%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.69%) Management Information System
2 29 (5.71%) Data Centre
3 26 (5.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 25 (4.92%) Data Protection Act
5 22 (4.33%) Onboarding
6 18 (3.54%) Virtual Team
7 17 (3.35%) Self-Motivation
8 16 (3.15%) Derivative
8 16 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (2.95%) FPGA
9 15 (2.95%) Verilog
10 14 (2.76%) Equities
11 13 (2.56%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 11 (2.17%) Algorithms
13 10 (1.97%) Data Structures
13 10 (1.97%) Fixed Income
14 9 (1.77%) Private Cloud
15 8 (1.57%) Cloud Native
15 8 (1.57%) Linux Command Line
16 7 (1.38%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 342 (67.32%) Linux
2 129 (25.39%) Windows
3 45 (8.86%) Windows Server
4 35 (6.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (4.53%) AIX
6 19 (3.74%) Solaris
7 9 (1.77%) CentOS
8 7 (1.38%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.98%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.98%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (0.79%) CatOS
10 4 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.59%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.59%) Oracle Linux
11 3 (0.59%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.39%) Amazon Linux
12 2 (0.39%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.39%) Embedded Linux
12 2 (0.39%) HPUX
12 2 (0.39%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
2 118 (23.23%) Agile
3 87 (17.13%) CI/CD
4 79 (15.55%) DevOps
5 45 (8.86%) Software Engineering
6 43 (8.46%) ITIL
7 41 (8.07%) High Availability
7 41 (8.07%) Microservices
8 40 (7.87%) Migration
9 39 (7.68%) Performance Tuning
10 35 (6.89%) OO
11 34 (6.69%) Data Protection
12 33 (6.50%) SDLC
13 32 (6.30%) Disaster Recovery
13 32 (6.30%) Task Automation
14 31 (6.10%) Containerisation
14 31 (6.10%) Problem Management
15 28 (5.51%) Test Automation
16 27 (5.31%) Storage Management
17 26 (5.12%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 198 (38.98%) Python
2 176 (34.65%) SQL
3 127 (25.00%) Java
4 102 (20.08%) Shell Script
5 59 (11.61%) Perl
6 41 (8.07%) Bash
7 39 (7.68%) PL/SQL
8 31 (6.10%) JavaScript
9 23 (4.53%) C
10 22 (4.33%) C++
10 22 (4.33%) PowerShell
11 20 (3.94%) Tcl
12 15 (2.95%) SystemVerilog
13 12 (2.36%) ActionScript
13 12 (2.36%) ActionScript 2.0
14 10 (1.97%) C#
15 9 (1.77%) Erlang
15 9 (1.77%) Prolog
16 8 (1.57%) Scala
16 8 (1.57%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 35 (6.89%) Security Cleared
2 30 (5.91%) Degree
3 29 (5.71%) SC Cleared
4 20 (3.94%) CCNP
4 20 (3.94%) Cisco Certification
5 19 (3.74%) ISTQB
6 18 (3.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 17 (3.35%) ISEB
8 7 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (0.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 4 (0.79%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.79%) CCSE
10 4 (0.79%) MCSE
10 4 (0.79%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.79%) OCP
10 4 (0.79%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (0.59%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.59%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
11 3 (0.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.59%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.72%) QA
2 8 (1.57%) MiFID
3 7 (1.38%) Basel III
3 7 (1.38%) Data Quality
3 7 (1.38%) Disclosure Scotland
3 7 (1.38%) SLA
4 6 (1.18%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.79%) GDPR
6 3 (0.59%) SEPA
7 2 (0.39%) GMP
7 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.20%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.20%) EMIR
8 1 (0.20%) IEC 61508
8 1 (0.20%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.20%) MISRA
8 1 (0.20%) MISRA C
System Software
1 49 (9.65%) Docker
2 44 (8.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 32 (6.30%) Active Directory
4 17 (3.35%) Veritas Cluster Server
5 10 (1.97%) NFS
5 10 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (1.77%) vSphere
7 8 (1.57%) Oracle RAC
7 8 (1.57%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.79%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 4 (0.79%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.59%) HDFS
9 3 (0.59%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.39%) GPFS
10 2 (0.39%) Veritas File System
10 2 (0.39%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 1 (0.20%) Firmware
11 1 (0.20%) KVM
11 1 (0.20%) Samba
Systems Management
1 66 (12.99%) Kubernetes
2 53 (10.43%) Ansible
3 41 (8.07%) Terraform
4 27 (5.31%) Puppet
5 19 (3.74%) Grafana
6 17 (3.35%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.95%) Oracle RMAN
7 15 (2.95%) Progress Chef
8 11 (2.17%) Control-M
9 10 (1.97%) NetBackup
10 8 (1.57%) PowerCLI
10 8 (1.57%) vRealize Orchestrator
11 7 (1.38%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 7 (1.38%) Tivoli
11 7 (1.38%) WSUS
12 6 (1.18%) ITRS Geneos
13 5 (0.98%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
13 5 (0.98%) Red Hat Satellite
13 5 (0.98%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 4 (0.79%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 120 (23.62%) Oracle
2 65 (12.80%) VMware
3 60 (11.81%) Microsoft
4 48 (9.45%) IBM
5 38 (7.48%) Splunk
6 35 (6.89%) Veritas
7 31 (6.10%) Red Hat
8 30 (5.91%) Sybase
9 23 (4.53%) Cisco
10 18 (3.54%) Juniper
11 15 (2.95%) Citrix
11 15 (2.95%) SAP
11 15 (2.95%) Xilinx
12 13 (2.56%) Google
13 12 (2.36%) ServiceNow
14 11 (2.17%) Bloomberg
14 11 (2.17%) Dynatrace
15 10 (1.97%) AppDynamics
15 10 (1.97%) IBM Sterling
15 10 (1.97%) Informatica