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 15 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 228 165 113
Rank change year-on-year -63 -52 -11
Contract jobs citing Unix 648 568 775
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 1.75% 2.03%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.19% 12.96% 14.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 414 371 485
10th Percentile £340 £300 £350
25th Percentile £418 £403 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £591 £612 £625
90th Percentile £715 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 5
10th Percentile - £30.34 -
25th Percentile £43.81 £36.48 -
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% +128.99% -63.77%
75th Percentile £55.00 £55.00 £28.75
90th Percentile £74.60 £64.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £27.50
% change year-on-year -4.11% +99.09% -58.69%

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 5,316 4,383 5,402
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.50% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,350 2,798 3,476
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £580
90th Percentile £675 £675 £684
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £440 £450
% change year-on-year +2.27% -2.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 393 270 274
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.53
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.07
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £49.25
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -48.93% +3.68%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +29.22% -52.10% +14.43%

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 15 September 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 15 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Unix in the UK

Unix
Top 17 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 15 September 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 -59 530 £500 - 559
UK excluding London -76 341 £475 - 240
London -75 220 £550 +3.77% 380
Work from Home -21 191 £500 +3.95% 186
North of England -27 121 £475 -8.83% 51
South East -55 92 £459 +9.29% 57
North West +6 87 £475 +5.20% 23
Midlands -12 72 £470 -8.75% 27
West Midlands -19 65 £471 -9.38% 24
Scotland -56 43 £450 -5.26% 25
Yorkshire -43 26 £500 -23.08% 17
South West -48 14 £663 -11.67% 33
North East -30 11 £475 - 11
East of England -30 8 £700 +40.00% 23
East Midlands -11 6 £456 +16.24% 3
Wales -10 4 £383 +35.40% 8
Northern Ireland -2 1 - - 18

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 33 (5.09%) Confluence
2 28 (4.32%) SAS
3 17 (2.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 14 (2.16%) SharePoint
5 13 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (2.01%) WebLogic
6 9 (1.39%) Apache Spark
7 7 (1.08%) Apache
7 7 (1.08%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.77%) WebLogic Portal
9 4 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.62%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.46%) nginx
11 2 (0.31%) CICS
11 2 (0.31%) CMS
11 2 (0.31%) IIS
11 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.31%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.31%) Oracle Service Bus
12 1 (0.15%) JBoss
Applications
1 14 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.08%) Notepad++
4 2 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (1.85%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (0.93%) Oracle EBS R12
2 6 (0.93%) SAP PSCD
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle E-Business Tax
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle FAH
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Internet Expenses
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle iProcurement
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
4 3 (0.46%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
4 3 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.46%) Summit
5 2 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.31%) Oracle Retail
6 1 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 148 (22.84%) AWS
2 87 (13.43%) Azure
3 45 (6.94%) GCP
4 43 (6.64%) GitHub
5 28 (4.32%) AWS Lambda
5 28 (4.32%) Serverless
6 26 (4.01%) Amazon S3
6 26 (4.01%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (3.70%) IaaS
8 22 (3.40%) Entra ID
9 18 (2.78%) SaaS
10 16 (2.47%) PaaS
11 15 (2.31%) OpenShift
12 14 (2.16%) AWS CloudFormation
12 14 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (2.16%) Power Platform
13 13 (2.01%) Amazon EC2
14 11 (1.70%) Snowflake
15 10 (1.54%) Amazon ECS
16 9 (1.39%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 28 (4.32%) DNS
1 28 (4.32%) Firewall
1 28 (4.32%) TCP/IP
2 20 (3.09%) SAN
3 14 (2.16%) HTTP
4 12 (1.85%) DHCP
5 11 (1.70%) SSH
6 10 (1.54%) NAS
6 10 (1.54%) SSL
7 8 (1.23%) LAN
7 8 (1.23%) WAN
8 7 (1.08%) LTE
8 7 (1.08%) Network Security
8 7 (1.08%) PuTTY
8 7 (1.08%) WinSCP
9 6 (0.93%) 5G
9 6 (0.93%) Diameter Protocol
9 6 (0.93%) Radio Access Network
9 6 (0.93%) VoLTE
9 6 (0.93%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (9.10%) Oracle Database
2 56 (8.64%) SQL Server
3 52 (8.02%) Relational Database
4 49 (7.56%) PostgreSQL
5 42 (6.48%) Data Warehouse
6 27 (4.17%) MongoDB
7 23 (3.55%) MySQL
8 21 (3.24%) Db2
8 21 (3.24%) Oracle Database 11g
9 18 (2.78%) NoSQL
10 16 (2.47%) DataStage
10 16 (2.47%) RDBMS
11 14 (2.16%) Amazon Aurora
11 14 (2.16%) Metadata
11 14 (2.16%) Oracle Database 12c
11 14 (2.16%) Power BI
12 13 (2.01%) BusinessObjects
12 13 (2.01%) Oracle Reports
12 13 (2.01%) Sybase ASE
13 12 (1.85%) Oracle Database 10g
Development Applications
1 85 (13.12%) Git
2 69 (10.65%) Jenkins
3 53 (8.18%) JIRA
4 52 (8.02%) GitLab
5 22 (3.40%) Artifactory
6 14 (2.16%) Maven
7 13 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
8 12 (1.85%) JUnit
8 12 (1.85%) SonarQube
9 11 (1.70%) Bitbucket
9 11 (1.70%) Gradle
9 11 (1.70%) Mockito
10 9 (1.39%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (1.23%) eggPlant
11 8 (1.23%) Selenium
12 5 (0.77%) HP UFT
12 5 (0.77%) JMeter
12 5 (0.77%) Oracle APEX
12 5 (0.77%) Postman
12 5 (0.77%) SoapUI
General
1 167 (25.77%) Finance
2 146 (22.53%) Social Skills
3 110 (16.98%) Banking
4 105 (16.20%) Analytical Skills
5 53 (8.18%) Public Sector
6 29 (4.48%) Investment Banking
7 22 (3.40%) Front Office
8 20 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
9 11 (1.70%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.23%) Retail
11 6 (0.93%) Military
12 5 (0.77%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
13 4 (0.62%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.62%) Legal
13 4 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.46%) General Ledger
15 2 (0.31%) Law
15 2 (0.31%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 140 (21.60%) Developer
2 107 (16.51%) Senior
3 66 (10.19%) Unix Engineer
4 60 (9.26%) Data Engineer
5 54 (8.33%) Senior Developer
6 50 (7.72%) Java Developer
7 42 (6.48%) DBA
8 33 (5.09%) Linux Engineer
8 33 (5.09%) Python Developer
9 29 (4.48%) Analyst
9 29 (4.48%) Support Engineer
10 28 (4.32%) Oracle DBA
11 26 (4.01%) Consultant
12 24 (3.70%) Architect
13 22 (3.40%) Administrator
14 21 (3.24%) Senior Java Developer
15 19 (2.93%) DevOps Engineer
16 16 (2.47%) Applications Support
17 15 (2.31%) Lead
18 13 (2.01%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (10.80%) Kafka
2 52 (8.02%) Terraform
3 48 (7.41%) REST
4 42 (6.48%) Middleware
5 41 (6.33%) RESTful
6 37 (5.71%) Spring
7 36 (5.56%) Spring Boot
8 26 (4.01%) XML
9 23 (3.55%) Web Services
10 22 (3.40%) .NET
11 20 (3.09%) HTML
11 20 (3.09%) SOAP
12 18 (2.78%) CSS
13 15 (2.31%) Django
13 15 (2.31%) Flask
13 15 (2.31%) Pandas
13 15 (2.31%) RabbitMQ
14 13 (2.01%) FastAPI
15 12 (1.85%) ActiveMQ
15 12 (1.85%) JDBC
Miscellaneous
1 46 (7.10%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.56%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (5.56%) Linux Command Line
3 33 (5.09%) Data Centre
3 33 (5.09%) Legacy Systems
4 24 (3.70%) Cloud Native
5 21 (3.24%) Replication
6 20 (3.09%) Fixed Income
6 20 (3.09%) Management Information System
7 18 (2.78%) Clustering
8 17 (2.62%) Derivative
9 15 (2.31%) Mainframe
10 13 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (2.01%) PKI
10 13 (2.01%) Product Ownership
10 13 (2.01%) Virtual Team
11 12 (1.85%) Private Cloud
12 11 (1.70%) Data Structures
12 11 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
12 11 (1.70%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 439 (67.75%) Linux
2 149 (22.99%) Windows
3 72 (11.11%) Solaris
4 42 (6.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 42 (6.48%) Windows Server
5 31 (4.78%) AIX
6 9 (1.39%) Oracle Linux
7 8 (1.23%) HPUX
8 7 (1.08%) SUSE
8 7 (1.08%) VMS
9 6 (0.93%) CentOS
10 5 (0.77%) Mac OS X
11 4 (0.62%) zOS
12 3 (0.46%) Android
12 3 (0.46%) Check Point GAiA
13 2 (0.31%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.31%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 161 (24.85%) CI/CD
2 133 (20.52%) Agile
3 111 (17.13%) DevOps
4 109 (16.82%) Problem-Solving
5 105 (16.20%) Migration
6 100 (15.43%) Test Automation
7 81 (12.50%) High Availability
8 76 (11.73%) Root Cause Analysis
9 68 (10.49%) Data Modelling
10 65 (10.03%) Continuous Improvement
10 65 (10.03%) Performance Tuning
11 63 (9.72%) Infrastructure as Code
12 62 (9.57%) ITIL
13 60 (9.26%) Containerisation
14 59 (9.10%) ETL
15 56 (8.64%) Data Pipeline
15 56 (8.64%) Runbook
16 54 (8.33%) Analytics
16 54 (8.33%) Microservices
17 53 (8.18%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 252 (38.89%) SQL
2 249 (38.43%) Python
3 136 (20.99%) Java
4 126 (19.44%) Shell Script
5 90 (13.89%) PL/SQL
6 62 (9.57%) Bash
7 52 (8.02%) PowerShell
8 43 (6.64%) Perl
9 34 (5.25%) JavaScript
10 29 (4.48%) C#
11 21 (3.24%) C++
12 15 (2.31%) C
13 9 (1.39%) Go
14 7 (1.08%) MUMPS
15 6 (0.93%) ABAP
15 6 (0.93%) Korn
15 6 (0.93%) Kotlin
15 6 (0.93%) Scala
15 6 (0.93%) T-SQL
16 5 (0.77%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 232 (35.80%) Security Cleared
2 188 (29.01%) SC Cleared
3 64 (9.88%) Degree
4 34 (5.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (3.24%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.16%) CISSP
6 14 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (1.39%) CISM
8 8 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (1.08%) CRISC
9 7 (1.08%) Oracle Certification
10 6 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (0.93%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (0.93%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (0.93%) GIAC
10 6 (0.93%) ISEB
10 6 (0.93%) ISTQB
11 5 (0.77%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.77%) RHCE
11 5 (0.77%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (5.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (5.40%) NIST
2 35 (5.40%) QA
3 29 (4.48%) Data Quality
4 12 (1.85%) GDPR
4 12 (1.85%) SLA
5 9 (1.39%) ISO 20022
6 7 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.93%) ISO 31000
8 5 (0.77%) GRC
8 5 (0.77%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.77%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.46%) Basel III
10 3 (0.46%) NCSC
10 3 (0.46%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.31%) SEPA
12 1 (0.15%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.15%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 72 (11.11%) Docker
2 39 (6.02%) Active Directory
3 26 (4.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (2.62%) Oracle RAC
5 16 (2.47%) NFS
6 9 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.62%) Firmware
8 4 (0.62%) GPFS
8 4 (0.62%) Postfix
8 4 (0.62%) PowerHA
8 4 (0.62%) Varnish
8 4 (0.62%) Veritas Volume Manager
8 4 (0.62%) vSphere
9 3 (0.46%) GridGain
9 3 (0.46%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.46%) VirtualBox
10 1 (0.15%) RACF
10 1 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 82 (12.65%) Kubernetes
2 65 (10.03%) Ansible
3 38 (5.86%) Grafana
4 30 (4.63%) Oracle RMAN
5 26 (4.01%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.24%) Data Guard
7 18 (2.78%) Progress Chef
8 16 (2.47%) Puppet
9 15 (2.31%) Control-M
10 11 (1.70%) Kibana
11 9 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (1.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 7 (1.08%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.77%) HAProxy
14 5 (0.77%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.77%) ITRS Geneos
14 5 (0.77%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.77%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.77%) ZABBIX
15 4 (0.62%) CA Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 247 (38.12%) Oracle
2 53 (8.18%) IBM
3 50 (7.72%) Splunk
4 48 (7.41%) Microsoft
5 40 (6.17%) BeyondTrust
6 31 (4.78%) Red Hat
7 30 (4.63%) CyberArk
7 30 (4.63%) Informatica
8 29 (4.48%) Sybase
8 29 (4.48%) VMware
9 23 (3.55%) Talend
10 21 (3.24%) SAP
11 20 (3.09%) ServiceNow
12 18 (2.78%) Denodo
13 15 (2.31%) Dynatrace
14 14 (2.16%) Google
15 12 (1.85%) SaltStack
16 11 (1.70%) BT
16 11 (1.70%) Solace
17 10 (1.54%) AppDynamics