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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 215 130 139
Rank change year-on-year -85 +9 -59
Contract jobs citing Unix 512 600 753
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 2.06% 1.70%
As % of the Operating Systems category 10.79% 14.40% 12.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 333 356 506
10th Percentile £261 £356 £332
25th Percentile £393 £423 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.54% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £565 £625 £656
90th Percentile £726 £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 14 9 22
10th Percentile - £39.60 £22.01
25th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £27.94 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.78% +31.25% -30.43%
75th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £53.93 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -58.29% +31.88% -27.27%

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 4,747 4,166 5,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.83% 14.30% 13.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,120 2,772 3,992
10th Percentile £181 £200 £180
25th Percentile £300 £320 £281
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £457
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.94% -11.26%
75th Percentile £564 £589 £594
90th Percentile £655 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £450 £432
% change year-on-year -7.78% +4.11% -9.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 157 410
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.60 £12.86
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.54% +27.27% -24.14%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £20.00
% change year-on-year -8.76% +23.30% -24.53%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -80 442 £464 -11.67% 86
UK excluding London -95 260 £429 -9.68% 67
London -54 211 £550 -2.22% 38
Work from Home -99 149 £454 -8.38% 47
North of England -61 82 £460 -12.38% 18
Midlands -37 68 £444 -3.59% 11
South East -34 67 £339 -30.07% 21
North West -9 65 £465 -11.43% 9
West Midlands -30 62 £444 -4.52% 7
Scotland -48 30 £420 -9.63% 5
Yorkshire -76 16 £447 -18.73% 6
South West -37 7 £700 +27.27% 3
East Midlands -33 6 £478 +13.02% 4
Wales -6 5 £265 +62.04% 1
East of England -41 3 £440 -2.22% 5
North East -19 1 £625 +11.11% 3

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 14 (2.73%) SharePoint
6 12 (2.34%) Apache Spark
7 11 (2.15%) SAS
8 8 (1.56%) CICS
9 6 (1.17%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.98%) JBoss
10 5 (0.98%) Oracle SOA Suite
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%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.98%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (0.98%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (0.98%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.98%) Summit
3 3 (0.59%) Oracle BRM
3 3 (0.59%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.39%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.20%) Kondor
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle CRM
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 97 (18.95%) AWS
2 74 (14.45%) Azure
3 28 (5.47%) GitHub
4 15 (2.93%) GCP
4 15 (2.93%) Serverless
5 14 (2.73%) SaaS
6 13 (2.54%) AWS CloudFormation
7 12 (2.34%) Amazon S3
7 12 (2.34%) AWS Lambda
7 12 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
8 11 (2.15%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 9 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
9 9 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
9 9 (1.76%) OpenShift
9 9 (1.76%) Sauce Labs
10 8 (1.56%) Power Platform
11 7 (1.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 7 (1.37%) Entra ID
11 7 (1.37%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 31 (6.05%) Firewall
2 15 (2.93%) DNS
2 15 (2.93%) SSH
3 13 (2.54%) SAN
3 13 (2.54%) Wireless
4 12 (2.34%) HTTP
4 12 (2.34%) TCP/IP
5 11 (2.15%) Network Security
6 8 (1.56%) InfiniBand
6 8 (1.56%) NAS
7 7 (1.37%) Ethernet
7 7 (1.37%) NetScaler
8 6 (1.17%) VPN
9 5 (0.98%) Ethernet VPN
9 5 (0.98%) FTP
9 5 (0.98%) RTP
9 5 (0.98%) SSL
10 4 (0.78%) FIX Connectivity
10 4 (0.78%) MPLS
11 3 (0.59%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (9.18%) MySQL
2 46 (8.98%) SQL Server
3 44 (8.59%) Relational Database
4 37 (7.23%) Oracle Database
5 35 (6.84%) MongoDB
6 26 (5.08%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (3.71%) KDB
7 19 (3.71%) Kdb+
7 19 (3.71%) NoSQL
8 14 (2.73%) Big Data
8 14 (2.73%) Metadata
9 12 (2.34%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (2.34%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (2.15%) Tick Data
11 10 (1.95%) Data Lake
11 10 (1.95%) Hadoop
12 9 (1.76%) DataStage
12 9 (1.76%) DB2
12 9 (1.76%) RDBMS
13 8 (1.56%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 47 (9.18%) Jenkins
2 42 (8.20%) Git
3 38 (7.42%) JIRA
4 35 (6.84%) GitLab
5 13 (2.54%) Bitbucket
5 13 (2.54%) Eclipse
6 12 (2.34%) JUnit
7 11 (2.15%) MSI
8 10 (1.95%) Mockito
9 9 (1.76%) Android Studio
9 9 (1.76%) Browser DevTools
9 9 (1.76%) Maven
9 9 (1.76%) Selenium
9 9 (1.76%) Xcode
10 8 (1.56%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.98%) Toad
12 4 (0.78%) Ant
12 4 (0.78%) Artifactory
12 4 (0.78%) IntelliJ
12 4 (0.78%) ScriptRunner
General
1 142 (27.73%) Finance
2 134 (26.17%) Social Skills
3 63 (12.30%) Banking
4 62 (12.11%) Analytical Skills
5 46 (8.98%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.88%) Front Office
7 22 (4.30%) 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%) Retail
14 3 (0.59%) Billing
14 3 (0.59%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.59%) Military
14 3 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 95 (18.55%) Developer
2 75 (14.65%) Senior
3 46 (8.98%) Analyst
4 35 (6.84%) Java Developer
5 34 (6.64%) Unix Engineer
6 33 (6.45%) Support Engineer
7 27 (5.27%) Linux Engineer
8 26 (5.08%) Technical Support
9 25 (4.88%) DBA
9 25 (4.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 22 (4.30%) Data Engineer
10 22 (4.30%) Oracle DBA
11 21 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
11 21 (4.10%) Site Engineer
12 19 (3.71%) Administrator
12 19 (3.71%) Software Engineer
12 19 (3.71%) Unix Linux Engineer
13 18 (3.52%) Senior Developer
14 17 (3.32%) Kafka Engineer
14 17 (3.32%) Senior Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (11.13%) Kafka
2 32 (6.25%) REST
3 28 (5.47%) XML
4 24 (4.69%) Middleware
5 20 (3.91%) React
6 19 (3.71%) SOAP
7 18 (3.52%) JSON
8 15 (2.93%) Elastic Stack
9 14 (2.73%) AngularJS
9 14 (2.73%) CSS
9 14 (2.73%) Spring
10 13 (2.54%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 10 (1.95%) FIX Protocol
11 10 (1.95%) HTML
11 10 (1.95%) JAX-RS
11 10 (1.95%) RESTful
12 9 (1.76%) ActiveMQ
12 9 (1.76%) Ajax
12 9 (1.76%) GraphQL
12 9 (1.76%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 28 (5.47%) Management Information System
2 23 (4.49%) Cloud Native
3 20 (3.91%) Onboarding
4 19 (3.71%) Linux Command Line
5 18 (3.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 17 (3.32%) Fixed Income
7 16 (3.13%) Data Centre
8 15 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (2.54%) Derivative
10 12 (2.34%) Equities
11 11 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.95%) Algorithms
12 10 (1.95%) Security Posture
13 9 (1.76%) Mainframe
13 9 (1.76%) Mobile App
14 8 (1.56%) BYOD
14 8 (1.56%) Enterprise Cloud
14 8 (1.56%) Public Cloud
14 8 (1.56%) Replication
14 8 (1.56%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 331 (64.65%) Linux
2 157 (30.66%) Windows
3 29 (5.66%) Windows Server
4 25 (4.88%) Solaris
5 23 (4.49%) AIX
6 21 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (2.15%) Mac OS X
8 9 (1.76%) Android
9 5 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.59%) VMS
11 2 (0.39%) CentOS
11 2 (0.39%) Oracle Linux
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
1 133 (25.98%) Agile
2 104 (20.31%) Problem-Solving
3 91 (17.77%) DevOps
4 80 (15.63%) CI/CD
5 57 (11.13%) Migration
6 55 (10.74%) Observability
7 53 (10.35%) Computer Science
8 51 (9.96%) ITIL
9 48 (9.38%) Incident Response
9 48 (9.38%) Software Engineering
10 45 (8.79%) Containerisation
10 45 (8.79%) Performance Tuning
11 44 (8.59%) OO
12 43 (8.40%) Data Modelling
12 43 (8.40%) Microservices
13 41 (8.01%) Analytics
14 40 (7.81%) Infrastructure as Code
15 39 (7.62%) Root Cause Analysis
15 39 (7.62%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 37 (7.23%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 200 (39.06%) SQL
2 184 (35.94%) Python
3 127 (24.80%) Java
4 101 (19.73%) Shell Script
5 61 (11.91%) Bash
6 59 (11.52%) Perl
7 36 (7.03%) C++
7 36 (7.03%) PowerShell
8 34 (6.64%) JavaScript
9 33 (6.45%) PL/SQL
10 28 (5.47%) C#
11 24 (4.69%) Korn
12 10 (1.95%) PHP
13 9 (1.76%) Scala
14 8 (1.56%) COBOL
15 7 (1.37%) Go
16 3 (0.59%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
17 2 (0.39%) PromQL
17 2 (0.39%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 124 (24.22%) Security Cleared
2 93 (18.16%) SC Cleared
3 73 (14.26%) Degree
4 39 (7.62%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (2.73%) 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%) MCSA
8 5 (0.98%) MCSE
9 4 (0.78%) ISTQB
9 4 (0.78%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
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%) SEPA
7 2 (0.39%) GDPR
7 2 (0.39%) GMP
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.20%) NCSC
8 1 (0.20%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 69 (13.48%) 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%) GridGain
9 3 (0.59%) PowerHA
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%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.39%) vSphere
11 1 (0.20%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 72 (14.06%) Kubernetes
2 64 (12.50%) Ansible
3 48 (9.38%) Terraform
4 38 (7.42%) 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 11 (2.15%) 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
1 167 (32.62%) Oracle
2 59 (11.52%) Splunk
3 50 (9.77%) Microsoft
4 42 (8.20%) IBM
5 29 (5.66%) ServiceNow
6 17 (3.32%) VMware
7 16 (3.13%) Cisco
8 15 (2.93%) Red Hat
9 14 (2.73%) Sybase
10 12 (2.34%) CyberArk
11 11 (2.15%) Talend
12 10 (1.95%) Informatica
12 10 (1.95%) Remedy
13 9 (1.76%) Fujitsu
14 8 (1.56%) Aruba
14 8 (1.56%) Dell
14 8 (1.56%) Veritas
15 7 (1.37%) Ab Initio
15 7 (1.37%) AppDynamics
15 7 (1.37%) CheckPoint