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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 151 138 83
Rank change year-on-year -13 -55 +27
Contract jobs citing Unix 557 748 1,717
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.91% 1.72% 2.88%
As % of the Operating Systems category 13.67% 12.87% 17.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 336 493 1,186
10th Percentile £363 £350 £420
25th Percentile £424 £425 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - +0.92%
75th Percentile £600 £675 £675
90th Percentile £725 £800 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £540
% change year-on-year -3.80% -8.56% +10.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 22 27
10th Percentile £39.70 £22.10 £41.50
25th Percentile £40.50 £25.66 £51.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £40.00 £58.59
Median % change year-on-year +31.25% -31.73% -9.86%
75th Percentile £55.00 £52.50 £73.73
90th Percentile £67.25 £67.25 £75.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £40.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +31.25% -30.43% +0.40%

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 4,075 5,812 9,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.94% 13.33% 16.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,687 3,913 6,831
10th Percentile £200 £183 £190
25th Percentile £319 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £468 £505
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% -7.33% +1.00%
75th Percentile £594 £588 £638
90th Percentile £699 £700 £719
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 177 397 416
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.75 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £15.50 £17.75
Median hourly rate £24.18 £22.00 £39.30
Median % change year-on-year +9.91% -44.02% +74.67%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.00 £22.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year +4.55% -29.60% +56.25%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 -16 405 £504 -8.41% 282
UK excluding London +28 288 £475 -3.80% 136
London -38 211 £550 -8.33% 174
Work from Home +28 210 £488 -8.79% 185
Scotland +28 105 £470 -18.35% 27
North of England +41 72 £525 +8.58% 34
South East -8 52 £500 +17.65% 30
North West +17 37 £470 -14.64% 19
Yorkshire +23 32 £650 +52.94% 10
Midlands +11 28 £460 -14.18% 12
West Midlands -3 22 £460 -14.18% 8
East of England +35 18 £450 +28.57% 18
Northern Ireland -4 8 £325 -35.00% 6
South West +30 7 £453 -7.18% 11
East Midlands - 6 £454 - 4
North East 0 3 £563 - 5
Wales -4 1 £167 -74.30% 1

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 26 (4.67%) Confluence
2 19 (3.41%) nginx
3 18 (3.23%) Apache
4 14 (2.51%) WebSphere
5 12 (2.15%) Traefik
6 11 (1.97%) Apache Spark
7 10 (1.80%) Tomcat
8 9 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
8 9 (1.62%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (1.44%) SAS
9 8 (1.44%) SharePoint
10 6 (1.08%) NetWeaver
11 5 (0.90%) OpenStack
11 5 (0.90%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.72%) CICS
12 4 (0.72%) CMS
12 4 (0.72%) Drupal
12 4 (0.72%) JBoss
12 4 (0.72%) WordPress
13 3 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 16 (2.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.33%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (2.33%) Kondor
2 8 (1.44%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (1.08%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (1.08%) SAP IBP
4 5 (0.90%) Oracle Applications
4 5 (0.90%) Oracle Assets
4 5 (0.90%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.36%) Actimize
6 2 (0.36%) Fidessa
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle 11i
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle iProcurement
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.18%) Remedy AR System
7 1 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 115 (20.65%) AWS
2 90 (16.16%) Azure
3 31 (5.57%) AWS CloudFormation
3 31 (5.57%) Entra ID
4 27 (4.85%) GCP
5 20 (3.59%) Cloud Computing
5 20 (3.59%) OpenShift
6 19 (3.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 16 (2.87%) Amazon ECS
7 16 (2.87%) Amazon S3
7 16 (2.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 15 (2.69%) AWS Fargate
9 14 (2.51%) Serverless
10 13 (2.33%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (1.97%) GitHub
12 7 (1.26%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (1.26%) Azure DevOps
12 7 (1.26%) Cohesity
13 6 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (1.08%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 46 (8.26%) SAN
2 32 (5.75%) DNS
3 29 (5.21%) TCP/IP
4 28 (5.03%) VPN
5 22 (3.95%) Firewall
6 21 (3.77%) LAN
7 19 (3.41%) MPLS
7 19 (3.41%) WAN
8 18 (3.23%) HTTP
8 18 (3.23%) NAS
9 17 (3.05%) Wireshark
10 15 (2.69%) ATM
10 15 (2.69%) Ethernet
10 15 (2.69%) Frame Relay
10 15 (2.69%) GPRS
10 15 (2.69%) GSM
10 15 (2.69%) LTE
10 15 (2.69%) SDH
10 15 (2.69%) UMTS
11 14 (2.51%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (6.64%) Relational Database
2 35 (6.28%) SQL Server
3 33 (5.92%) MongoDB
4 27 (4.85%) DB2
5 23 (4.13%) RDBMS
6 22 (3.95%) Oracle Database
7 17 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
8 16 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
9 13 (2.33%) Big Data
9 13 (2.33%) Oracle Reports
10 11 (1.97%) Hadoop
10 11 (1.97%) MySQL
11 8 (1.44%) Apache Hive
11 8 (1.44%) Metadata
12 7 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (1.26%) Impala
12 7 (1.26%) KDB
12 7 (1.26%) NoSQL
13 6 (1.08%) Amazon Redshift
13 6 (1.08%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 90 (16.16%) Jenkins
2 62 (11.13%) Git
3 43 (7.72%) JIRA
4 41 (7.36%) GitLab
5 17 (3.05%) Subversion
6 14 (2.51%) Bitbucket
6 14 (2.51%) JUnit
7 13 (2.33%) Maven
8 12 (2.15%) Toad
9 11 (1.97%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (1.62%) Bitbucket Server
10 9 (1.62%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (1.44%) Ant
12 5 (0.90%) Jasmine
12 5 (0.90%) TeamCity
13 4 (0.72%) Mocha
13 4 (0.72%) SoapUI
13 4 (0.72%) SonarQube
13 4 (0.72%) Sonatype Nexus
13 4 (0.72%) WinRunner
General
1 194 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 128 (22.98%) Finance
3 80 (14.36%) Banking
4 79 (14.18%) Analytical Skills
5 30 (5.39%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.85%) Front Office
7 19 (3.41%) Investment Banking
8 18 (3.23%) Telecoms
9 10 (1.80%) Financial Institution
10 9 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
11 8 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (1.44%) Military
12 7 (1.26%) General Ledger
13 6 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
13 6 (1.08%) French Language
13 6 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
13 6 (1.08%) Legal
13 6 (1.08%) Retail Banking
14 5 (0.90%) Wholesale Banking
15 4 (0.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 93 (16.70%) Developer
2 65 (11.67%) Analyst
3 58 (10.41%) Senior
4 39 (7.00%) Java Developer
5 34 (6.10%) DevOps Engineer
6 33 (5.92%) Linux Engineer
7 31 (5.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 28 (5.03%) Unix Engineer
9 27 (4.85%) Consultant
10 26 (4.67%) Applications Support
11 25 (4.49%) Administrator
11 25 (4.49%) Architect
11 25 (4.49%) Support Engineer
12 24 (4.31%) Network Engineer
13 23 (4.13%) Senior DevOps
14 20 (3.59%) Pensions Analyst
15 19 (3.41%) Lead
16 18 (3.23%) Senior DevOps Engineer
16 18 (3.23%) Technical Analyst
17 17 (3.05%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (7.18%) Kafka
2 35 (6.28%) Middleware
3 32 (5.75%) Web Services
4 25 (4.49%) SOAP
5 24 (4.31%) cloud-init
6 21 (3.77%) XML
7 19 (3.41%) Spring
8 18 (3.23%) REST
8 18 (3.23%) RESTful
9 17 (3.05%) AngularJS
9 17 (3.05%) HTML
9 17 (3.05%) J2EE
9 17 (3.05%) Spring Boot
10 14 (2.51%) CSS
10 14 (2.51%) Keycloak
11 13 (2.33%) .NET
12 11 (1.97%) Elastic Stack
12 11 (1.97%) jQuery
12 11 (1.97%) JSON
13 10 (1.80%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 31 (5.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 30 (5.39%) Management Information System
3 22 (3.95%) Data Protection Act
3 22 (3.95%) Derivative
4 20 (3.59%) Data Centre
5 18 (3.23%) Algorithms
5 18 (3.23%) Onboarding
5 18 (3.23%) Self-Motivation
6 15 (2.69%) Equities
6 15 (2.69%) PKI
7 14 (2.51%) Virtual Team
8 13 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
9 12 (2.15%) SWIFT Messaging Network
10 11 (1.97%) Mainframe
10 11 (1.97%) Product Ownership
11 10 (1.80%) Cloud Native
11 10 (1.80%) FPGA
11 10 (1.80%) Verilog
12 9 (1.62%) Equity Derivative
12 9 (1.62%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 367 (65.89%) Linux
2 134 (24.06%) Windows
3 56 (10.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 39 (7.00%) AIX
5 37 (6.64%) Windows Server
6 36 (6.46%) CentOS
7 20 (3.59%) Solaris
8 8 (1.44%) HPUX
9 7 (1.26%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.90%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.90%) Mac OS X
11 4 (0.72%) CatOS
11 4 (0.72%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.72%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
12 3 (0.54%) Embedded Linux
12 3 (0.54%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.54%) zOS
13 2 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
13 2 (0.36%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (23.70%) Problem-Solving
2 102 (18.31%) Agile
3 95 (17.06%) CI/CD
4 88 (15.80%) DevOps
5 55 (9.87%) High Availability
6 51 (9.16%) Test Automation
7 48 (8.62%) Software Engineering
8 46 (8.26%) Migration
9 45 (8.08%) Infrastructure as Code
10 44 (7.90%) SDLC
11 42 (7.54%) ITIL
12 39 (7.00%) Data Protection
13 38 (6.82%) Observability
14 36 (6.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 36 (6.46%) OO
15 35 (6.28%) Continuous Integration
15 35 (6.28%) Performance Tuning
16 33 (5.92%) Problem Management
17 31 (5.57%) Task Automation
18 29 (5.21%) Storage Management
Programming Languages
1 206 (36.98%) Python
2 193 (34.65%) SQL
3 109 (19.57%) Java
4 86 (15.44%) Shell Script
5 62 (11.13%) Bash
6 54 (9.69%) Perl
7 37 (6.64%) PL/SQL
8 29 (5.21%) JavaScript
9 28 (5.03%) Go
10 20 (3.59%) C
10 20 (3.59%) PowerShell
11 14 (2.51%) Tcl
12 13 (2.33%) ActionScript
12 13 (2.33%) ActionScript 2.0
13 11 (1.97%) C#
13 11 (1.97%) Groovy
14 10 (1.80%) SystemVerilog
15 8 (1.44%) C++
15 8 (1.44%) COBOL
15 8 (1.44%) PHP
Qualifications
1 66 (11.85%) Security Cleared
2 60 (10.77%) SC Cleared
3 29 (5.21%) Degree
4 23 (4.13%) Cisco Certification
5 21 (3.77%) CCNP
5 21 (3.77%) ISTQB
6 19 (3.41%) ISEB
7 18 (3.23%) AWS Certification
8 17 (3.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 8 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (0.90%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 4 (0.72%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 4 (0.72%) CCSE
11 4 (0.72%) Master's Degree
11 4 (0.72%) MCSE
11 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Certification
12 2 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.36%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
12 2 (0.36%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.41%) QA
2 14 (2.51%) NCSC
3 10 (1.80%) Accessibility
4 9 (1.62%) Data Quality
5 8 (1.44%) Disclosure Scotland
5 8 (1.44%) SLA
6 7 (1.26%) NIST
7 6 (1.08%) MiFID
8 5 (0.90%) Basel III
8 5 (0.90%) WCAG
9 4 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 4 (0.72%) GDPR
10 3 (0.54%) SEPA
11 2 (0.36%) GMP
11 2 (0.36%) HL7
11 2 (0.36%) ISO 20022
11 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 49 (8.80%) Docker
2 45 (8.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 38 (6.82%) Active Directory
4 13 (2.33%) Veritas Cluster Server
5 12 (2.15%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (1.80%) Hyper-V
7 8 (1.44%) RACF
7 8 (1.44%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (1.26%) NFS
9 6 (1.08%) vSphere
10 5 (0.90%) HDFS
11 4 (0.72%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 4 (0.72%) KVM
11 4 (0.72%) VMware NSX
12 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
13 2 (0.36%) GPFS
13 2 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.36%) Veritas File System
13 2 (0.36%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.18%) Samba
Systems Management
1 82 (14.72%) Kubernetes
2 70 (12.57%) Ansible
3 65 (11.67%) Terraform
4 31 (5.57%) Grafana
5 28 (5.03%) Prometheus
6 27 (4.85%) Puppet
7 26 (4.67%) Packer
8 24 (4.31%) Progress Chef
9 16 (2.87%) Istio
9 16 (2.87%) ZABBIX
10 14 (2.51%) Consul
10 14 (2.51%) HAProxy
10 14 (2.51%) Jamf Pro
10 14 (2.51%) linkerd
10 14 (2.51%) NetBackup
10 14 (2.51%) Rancher
11 13 (2.33%) Oracle RMAN
12 8 (1.44%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (1.44%) SCCM
13 7 (1.26%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 103 (18.49%) Oracle
2 78 (14.00%) Microsoft
3 61 (10.95%) VMware
4 52 (9.34%) Splunk
5 43 (7.72%) IBM
6 40 (7.18%) Veritas
7 32 (5.75%) Cisco
8 31 (5.57%) Red Hat
9 28 (5.03%) Sybase
10 24 (4.31%) CyberArk
11 22 (3.95%) Juniper
12 15 (2.69%) Apple
12 15 (2.69%) Okta
13 14 (2.51%) AppDynamics
14 12 (2.15%) ESET
15 11 (1.97%) Bloomberg
15 11 (1.97%) Citrix
15 11 (1.97%) Informatica
15 11 (1.97%) SAP
15 11 (1.97%) ServiceNow