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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 223 166 128
Rank change year-on-year -57 -38 -40
Contract jobs citing Unix 597 509 773
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.67% 1.78%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.30% 12.06% 13.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 338 312 515
10th Percentile £304 £358 £334
25th Percentile £402 £408 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £486 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.21% -7.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £621
90th Percentile £661 £649 £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 4,853 4,219 5,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 13.81% 13.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,096 2,739 3,890
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 £581 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 216 436
10th Percentile £14.60 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.88 £17.41 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.83 £22.25 £24.93
Median % change year-on-year +20.58% -10.74% -41.35%
75th Percentile £63.75 £42.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.20 £66.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £18.87 £31.25
% change year-on-year +40.12% -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -46 506 £475 -0.63% 63
UK excluding London -61 346 £459 -2.86% 54
London -73 192 £550 +10.00% 23
Work from Home -27 176 £471 +4.67% 34
North of England -28 109 £481 +7.30% 20
South East -14 108 £401 -27.09% 17
North West -8 82 £481 +13.64% 18
Midlands -6 81 £459 +2.00% 4
West Midlands -5 75 £459 -0.22% 4
Scotland -46 37 £425 -10.53% 2
Yorkshire -51 22 £500 -4.76% 2
East of England -29 10 £700 +55.56% 3
North East -31 6 £480 +28.00%
Wales -14 5 £265 -6.19% 5
East Midlands -15 5 £463 +18.29%
South West -44 5 £600 - 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 35 (5.86%) Confluence
2 26 (4.36%) SAS
3 18 (3.02%) Apache
4 16 (2.68%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (1.68%) CICS
6 10 (1.68%) WebLogic
7 7 (1.17%) NetWeaver
7 7 (1.17%) 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%) IIS
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Spatial
11 2 (0.34%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (1.17%) 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%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 115 (19.26%) AWS
2 74 (12.40%) Azure
3 29 (4.86%) GitHub
4 25 (4.19%) GCP
5 24 (4.02%) Entra ID
6 23 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (3.69%) Serverless
8 21 (3.52%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (3.35%) Amazon S3
10 17 (2.85%) IaaS
10 17 (2.85%) OpenShift
10 17 (2.85%) PaaS
11 16 (2.68%) SaaS
12 14 (2.35%) Power Platform
13 11 (1.84%) Azure DevOps
14 10 (1.68%) Snowflake
15 9 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
16 8 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
17 7 (1.17%) Amazon ECS
17 7 (1.17%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.19%) Firewall
2 25 (4.19%) DNS
3 21 (3.52%) SAN
4 17 (2.85%) TCP/IP
5 14 (2.35%) NAS
6 11 (1.84%) HTTP
6 11 (1.84%) SSH
7 8 (1.34%) Network Security
7 8 (1.34%) SSL
7 8 (1.34%) Wireless
7 8 (1.34%) Wireshark
8 7 (1.17%) 5G
8 7 (1.17%) FTP
8 7 (1.17%) PuTTY
8 7 (1.17%) VPN
8 7 (1.17%) WinSCP
9 6 (1.01%) DHCP
9 6 (1.01%) Ethernet
9 6 (1.01%) InfiniBand
9 6 (1.01%) LTE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (12.23%) SQL Server
2 43 (7.20%) Relational Database
3 41 (6.87%) Oracle Database
4 36 (6.03%) MySQL
5 30 (5.03%) PostgreSQL
6 29 (4.86%) MongoDB
7 20 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
8 19 (3.18%) Db2
8 19 (3.18%) Metadata
9 17 (2.85%) KDB
10 16 (2.68%) Big Data
10 16 (2.68%) BusinessObjects
10 16 (2.68%) DataStage
11 14 (2.35%) Amazon Aurora
11 14 (2.35%) Kdb+
11 14 (2.35%) NoSQL
11 14 (2.35%) Power BI
12 13 (2.18%) Sybase ASE
13 11 (1.84%) Oracle Database 12c
14 10 (1.68%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 55 (9.21%) Jenkins
2 50 (8.38%) GitLab
2 50 (8.38%) JIRA
3 42 (7.04%) Git
4 23 (3.85%) Artifactory
5 13 (2.18%) Mockito
6 10 (1.68%) Bitbucket
7 9 (1.51%) Maven
8 7 (1.17%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (0.84%) Oracle Forms
10 4 (0.67%) CA Gen
10 4 (0.67%) JUnit
10 4 (0.67%) Selenium
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
General
1 153 (25.63%) Finance
2 125 (20.94%) Social Skills
3 95 (15.91%) Banking
4 79 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
5 61 (10.22%) Public Sector
6 29 (4.86%) Investment Banking
7 24 (4.02%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (3.52%) Front Office
9 12 (2.01%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (1.84%) 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
1 111 (18.59%) Developer
2 76 (12.73%) Senior
3 65 (10.89%) Data Engineer
4 45 (7.54%) Unix Engineer
5 43 (7.20%) Java Developer
5 43 (7.20%) Support Engineer
6 39 (6.53%) Analyst
7 35 (5.86%) DBA
8 30 (5.03%) Senior Developer
9 25 (4.19%) Architect
10 24 (4.02%) Oracle DBA
10 24 (4.02%) Python Developer
11 22 (3.69%) Administrator
12 21 (3.52%) Consultant
13 20 (3.35%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 19 (3.18%) Technical Support
15 18 (3.02%) Site Engineer
16 16 (2.68%) Senior Java Developer
17 15 (2.51%) Applications Support
18 14 (2.35%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (8.88%) Kafka
2 36 (6.03%) REST
3 33 (5.53%) Middleware
4 26 (4.36%) RESTful
5 21 (3.52%) Spring
6 20 (3.35%) Spring Boot
6 20 (3.35%) XML
7 17 (2.85%) CSS
8 15 (2.51%) Web Services
9 14 (2.35%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 13 (2.18%) ActiveMQ
10 13 (2.18%) HTML
10 13 (2.18%) JAX-RS
10 13 (2.18%) LDAP
11 11 (1.84%) Pandas
11 11 (1.84%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (1.68%) JSON
13 9 (1.51%) FastAPI
13 9 (1.51%) Flask
13 9 (1.51%) React
Miscellaneous
1 43 (7.20%) Onboarding
2 36 (6.03%) Linux Command Line
3 30 (5.03%) Data Centre
3 30 (5.03%) Legacy Systems
4 25 (4.19%) Management Information System
5 20 (3.35%) Mainframe
6 19 (3.18%) Cloud Native
7 18 (3.02%) Derivative
7 18 (3.02%) Replication
8 17 (2.85%) Fixed Income
9 13 (2.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 12 (2.01%) Equities
11 11 (1.84%) Clustering
11 11 (1.84%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (1.68%) BYOD
12 10 (1.68%) Public Cloud
12 10 (1.68%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.68%) VSAM
13 9 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.51%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 396 (66.33%) Linux
2 156 (26.13%) Windows
3 53 (8.88%) Solaris
4 44 (7.37%) Windows Server
5 30 (5.03%) AIX
6 23 (3.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (2.01%) Mac OS X
8 9 (1.51%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (1.17%) HPUX
10 6 (1.01%) SUSE
11 5 (0.84%) 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 (0.34%) CentOS
13 2 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.34%) zOS
14 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (21.61%) Agile
2 119 (19.93%) CI/CD
3 108 (18.09%) Problem-Solving
4 91 (15.24%) Migration
5 79 (13.23%) DevOps
5 79 (13.23%) High Availability
6 76 (12.73%) ITIL
7 66 (11.06%) Test Automation
8 60 (10.05%) Root Cause Analysis
9 55 (9.21%) Performance Tuning
10 52 (8.71%) Disaster Recovery
11 51 (8.54%) Runbook
12 49 (8.21%) Observability
13 48 (8.04%) Microservices
14 47 (7.87%) Change Management
14 47 (7.87%) Data Modelling
15 46 (7.71%) Analytics
15 46 (7.71%) Incident Management
16 43 (7.20%) Computer Science
17 42 (7.04%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 225 (37.69%) SQL
2 222 (37.19%) Python
3 109 (18.26%) Java
3 109 (18.26%) Shell Script
4 72 (12.06%) PL/SQL
5 53 (8.88%) PowerShell
6 52 (8.71%) Bash
7 36 (6.03%) JavaScript
7 36 (6.03%) Perl
8 25 (4.19%) C#
9 22 (3.69%) C++
10 16 (2.68%) Korn
11 12 (2.01%) COBOL
12 8 (1.34%) Scala
13 7 (1.17%) C
14 5 (0.84%) Go
14 5 (0.84%) ProC
15 4 (0.67%) Kotlin
15 4 (0.67%) Ruby
15 4 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 197 (33.00%) Security Cleared
2 166 (27.81%) SC Cleared
3 73 (12.23%) Degree
4 32 (5.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (3.18%) CISSP
7 11 (1.84%) CompTIA Security+
8 10 (1.68%) DV Cleared
9 9 (1.51%) CISM
10 7 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.17%) 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%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (6.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 37 (6.20%) NIST
3 23 (3.85%) QA
4 16 (2.68%) SLA
5 11 (1.84%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.17%) 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%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.50%) FATCA
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 55 (9.21%) Docker
2 45 (7.54%) Active Directory
3 21 (3.52%) Oracle RAC
4 18 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
5 17 (2.85%) NFS
6 11 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.17%) 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 69 (11.56%) Kubernetes
2 58 (9.72%) Ansible
3 36 (6.03%) Grafana
3 36 (6.03%) Terraform
4 31 (5.19%) Oracle RMAN
5 25 (4.19%) Prometheus
6 15 (2.51%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 14 (2.35%) Data Guard
8 10 (1.68%) Kibana
9 9 (1.51%) Progress Chef
9 9 (1.51%) Puppet
9 9 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.34%) NetBackup
11 7 (1.17%) 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
1 235 (39.36%) Oracle
2 46 (7.71%) IBM
2 46 (7.71%) Splunk
3 38 (6.37%) BeyondTrust
3 38 (6.37%) CyberArk
3 38 (6.37%) Microsoft
4 34 (5.70%) Talend
5 27 (4.52%) ServiceNow
5 27 (4.52%) VMware
6 26 (4.36%) Informatica
6 26 (4.36%) Sybase
7 21 (3.52%) Denodo
8 19 (3.18%) Cisco
9 16 (2.68%) Red Hat
10 15 (2.51%) Dynatrace
11 13 (2.18%) SAP
12 11 (1.84%) BT
12 11 (1.84%) CheckPoint
13 10 (1.68%) Veritas
14 9 (1.51%) Murex