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 29 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 129 120
Rank change year-on-year -59 -9 -37
Contract jobs citing Unix 578 661 860
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.50% 2.10% 1.96%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.06% 14.79% 13.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 388 375 611
10th Percentile £204 £350 £363
25th Percentile £381 £425 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -4.55% -0.50%
75th Percentile £625 £670 £665
90th Percentile £738 £771 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £440 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -7.37% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 19
10th Percentile £26.28 £38.70 £22.00
25th Percentile £26.31 £40.50 £26.78
Median hourly rate £27.75 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.32% +2.50% -38.22%
75th Percentile £29.31 £59.00 £51.25
90th Percentile £29.43 £69.50 £69.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £47.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year - +17.50% -30.43%

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 4,794 4,470 6,234
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.46% 14.20% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,177 2,777 4,228
10th Percentile £174 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £320 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £473
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +0.53% -7.80%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £695 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 159 360
10th Percentile £14.80 £16.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.12 £21.02 £17.59
Median hourly rate £25.00 £34.00 £25.90
Median % change year-on-year -26.47% +31.30% +0.72%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £62.61
90th Percentile £69.99 £70.20 £72.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £31.08 £25.18
% change year-on-year -27.36% +23.43% +4.74%

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 29 January 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
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 29 January 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 -65 485 £479 -12.95% 128
UK excluding London -63 289 £440 -7.37% 121
London -28 237 £565 -5.83% 36
Work from Home -54 164 £462 -7.70% 94
North of England -32 87 £468 -25.38% 20
South East -28 78 £208 -53.11% 36
Midlands -54 64 £449 -10.22% 17
West Midlands -30 60 £449 -15.10% 13
Scotland -27 50 £425 -5.56% 11
North West -4 49 £463 -19.57% 13
Yorkshire -42 35 £495 -29.29% 3
South West -27 10 £700 +33.33% 12
North East -12 5 £563 +2.27% 4
East Midlands -30 4 £465 +10.06% 4
Wales -6 1 £265 +64.60% 7
Northern Ireland -10 1 - - 4
East of England -27 1 £440 +10.00% 19

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 34 (5.88%) Apache
2 32 (5.54%) WebLogic
3 25 (4.33%) Confluence
4 19 (3.29%) SharePoint
5 18 (3.11%) JBoss
6 10 (1.73%) Tomcat
7 9 (1.56%) IIS
7 9 (1.56%) Tuxedo
7 9 (1.56%) WebSphere
8 8 (1.38%) iPlanet
8 8 (1.38%) WebSphere Application Server
9 6 (1.04%) Apache Spark
9 6 (1.04%) nginx
10 5 (0.87%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.87%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.87%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.87%) SAS
11 2 (0.35%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.35%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.35%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 18 (3.11%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (1.38%) Oracle EBS
1 8 (1.38%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.87%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.52%) Kondor
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle BRM
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.35%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.35%) Summit
6 1 (0.17%) Finacle
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 148 (25.61%) AWS
2 96 (16.61%) Azure
3 33 (5.71%) GCP
4 26 (4.50%) GitHub
5 22 (3.81%) AWS CloudFormation
5 22 (3.81%) SaaS
6 19 (3.29%) OpenShift
7 16 (2.77%) Sauce Labs
8 15 (2.60%) Amazon S3
9 14 (2.42%) Amazon EC2
10 12 (2.08%) Serverless
11 11 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 11 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (1.90%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (1.90%) Cloud Computing
12 10 (1.73%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (1.56%) OCI
13 9 (1.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 8 (1.38%) Microsoft 365
14 8 (1.38%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 28 (4.84%) Firewall
2 23 (3.98%) HTTP
3 20 (3.46%) TCP/IP
4 19 (3.29%) DNS
5 16 (2.77%) Wireless
6 15 (2.60%) SSH
7 11 (1.90%) Network Security
8 10 (1.73%) Kerberos
9 8 (1.38%) SSL
10 5 (0.87%) FTP
10 5 (0.87%) SAN
11 4 (0.69%) DHCP
11 4 (0.69%) FIX Connectivity
11 4 (0.69%) NAS
11 4 (0.69%) Wireshark
12 3 (0.52%) Broadband
12 3 (0.52%) GPRS
12 3 (0.52%) InfiniBand
12 3 (0.52%) Unified Communications
12 3 (0.52%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (9.52%) Relational Database
2 52 (9.00%) MongoDB
2 52 (9.00%) MySQL
3 41 (7.09%) Oracle Database
4 29 (5.02%) NoSQL
5 25 (4.33%) Elasticsearch
5 25 (4.33%) PostgreSQL
6 19 (3.29%) SQL Server
7 17 (2.94%) KDB
7 17 (2.94%) Kdb+
8 15 (2.60%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (2.08%) Big Data
10 11 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
11 10 (1.73%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (1.73%) Data Lake
12 9 (1.56%) RDBMS
13 8 (1.38%) Tick Data
14 7 (1.21%) Metadata
15 6 (1.04%) Couchbase
15 6 (1.04%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 58 (10.03%) Jenkins
2 49 (8.48%) Git
3 37 (6.40%) JIRA
4 33 (5.71%) GitLab
5 25 (4.33%) Eclipse
6 22 (3.81%) JUnit
7 20 (3.46%) Mockito
8 18 (3.11%) Xcode
9 17 (2.94%) Browser DevTools
10 16 (2.77%) Android Studio
11 15 (2.60%) Sonatype Nexus
12 13 (2.25%) Selenium
13 11 (1.90%) Bitbucket
14 9 (1.56%) IntelliJ
14 9 (1.56%) Maven
15 8 (1.38%) Bitbucket Server
15 8 (1.38%) CA Release Automation
15 8 (1.38%) MSI
16 6 (1.04%) SoapUI
17 5 (0.87%) QUnit
General
1 166 (28.72%) Social Skills
2 152 (26.30%) Finance
3 75 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (9.86%) Banking
5 36 (6.23%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.67%) Front Office
7 15 (2.60%) Investment Banking
8 14 (2.42%) Financial Institution
9 13 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
10 12 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.21%) Legal
11 7 (1.21%) Military
12 6 (1.04%) Telecoms
13 5 (0.87%) Law
14 3 (0.52%) Billing
14 3 (0.52%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.35%) General Ledger
15 2 (0.35%) Marketing
15 2 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 116 (20.07%) Developer
2 101 (17.47%) Senior
3 45 (7.79%) Java Developer
4 44 (7.61%) Technical Support
5 42 (7.27%) Analyst
6 35 (6.06%) DevOps Engineer
6 35 (6.06%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 33 (5.71%) Unix Engineer
8 31 (5.36%) Support Engineer
9 30 (5.19%) Linux Engineer
10 29 (5.02%) Site Engineer
11 26 (4.50%) Senior Developer
12 24 (4.15%) Consultant
12 24 (4.15%) Technical Engineer
13 23 (3.98%) Software Engineer
14 22 (3.81%) Kafka Engineer
14 22 (3.81%) Technical Support Engineer
15 21 (3.63%) C++ Software Engineer
15 21 (3.63%) Lead
15 21 (3.63%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (13.84%) Kafka
2 38 (6.57%) React
3 37 (6.40%) REST
4 32 (5.54%) SOAP
5 25 (4.33%) CSS
5 25 (4.33%) XML
6 24 (4.15%) AngularJS
7 22 (3.81%) HTML
7 22 (3.81%) Middleware
8 19 (3.29%) ActiveMQ
9 18 (3.11%) JAX-RS
9 18 (3.11%) JSON
10 17 (2.94%) Ajax
10 17 (2.94%) GraphQL
10 17 (2.94%) Spring
11 16 (2.77%) Elastic Stack
12 15 (2.60%) HTML5
13 14 (2.42%) Hibernate
14 12 (2.08%) J2EE
15 10 (1.73%) FIX Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 32 (5.54%) Management Information System
2 20 (3.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 19 (3.29%) Mobile App
4 18 (3.11%) Linux Command Line
4 18 (3.11%) Onboarding
5 17 (2.94%) Cloud Native
6 15 (2.60%) Equities
7 13 (2.25%) Algorithms
7 13 (2.25%) Fixed Income
8 12 (2.08%) Derivative
9 11 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (1.90%) Tandem
10 10 (1.73%) Greenfield Project
10 10 (1.73%) Replication
10 10 (1.73%) Security Posture
11 9 (1.56%) Data Centre
12 8 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
12 8 (1.38%) Public Cloud
13 7 (1.21%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 392 (67.82%) Linux
2 182 (31.49%) Windows
3 28 (4.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (3.98%) Mac OS X
5 20 (3.46%) Solaris
6 19 (3.29%) Windows Server
7 18 (3.11%) Android
8 13 (2.25%) Mac OS
9 12 (2.08%) CentOS
10 6 (1.04%) AIX
11 4 (0.69%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.35%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.35%) Oracle Linux
13 1 (0.17%) VMS
13 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.17%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (27.68%) Agile
2 116 (20.07%) Problem-Solving
3 111 (19.20%) DevOps
4 107 (18.51%) CI/CD
5 66 (11.42%) Computer Science
6 65 (11.25%) Incident Response
7 62 (10.73%) Microservices
8 61 (10.55%) Observability
8 61 (10.55%) OO
9 56 (9.69%) Infrastructure as Code
10 54 (9.34%) Software Engineering
11 52 (9.00%) Containerisation
12 51 (8.82%) Test Automation
13 49 (8.48%) Migration
14 47 (8.13%) Data Modelling
14 47 (8.13%) TDD
15 46 (7.96%) Continuous Improvement
16 45 (7.79%) Analytics
16 45 (7.79%) Change Management
16 45 (7.79%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 231 (39.97%) Python
2 219 (37.89%) SQL
3 154 (26.64%) Java
4 102 (17.65%) Shell Script
5 86 (14.88%) Perl
6 81 (14.01%) Bash
7 54 (9.34%) JavaScript
8 48 (8.30%) C++
9 41 (7.09%) PowerShell
10 31 (5.36%) C#
11 29 (5.02%) PL/SQL
12 14 (2.42%) Go
13 12 (2.08%) Korn
13 12 (2.08%) Scala
14 10 (1.73%) Groovy
15 9 (1.56%) PHP
16 8 (1.38%) Search Processing Language
17 6 (1.04%) TypeScript
18 4 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
18 4 (0.69%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 114 (19.72%) Security Cleared
2 93 (16.09%) Degree
3 80 (13.84%) SC Cleared
4 54 (9.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (1.90%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.90%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 10 (1.73%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.04%) OSCP
9 5 (0.87%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.87%) GPEN
9 5 (0.87%) GWAPT
9 5 (0.87%) ISTQB
9 5 (0.87%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (0.87%) RHCE
10 4 (0.69%) CISSP
11 3 (0.52%) CCIE
11 3 (0.52%) CCNA
11 3 (0.52%) CCNP
11 3 (0.52%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.29%) SLA
2 16 (2.77%) QA
3 9 (1.56%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.69%) GMP
4 4 (0.69%) HIPAA
4 4 (0.69%) NCSC
4 4 (0.69%) SOC 2
5 3 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.52%) NIST
5 3 (0.52%) SEPA
6 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.17%) GDPR
7 1 (0.17%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 91 (15.74%) Docker
2 13 (2.25%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.38%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 8 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.21%) KVM
5 5 (0.87%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.52%) GPFS
6 3 (0.52%) NFS
6 3 (0.52%) QEMU
7 2 (0.35%) GridGain
7 2 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.17%) Ceph
8 1 (0.17%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.17%) iptables
8 1 (0.17%) Postfix
8 1 (0.17%) Samba
8 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.17%) Varnish
8 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.17%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 87 (15.05%) Kubernetes
2 74 (12.80%) Ansible
3 73 (12.63%) Terraform
4 39 (6.75%) Grafana
5 31 (5.36%) Puppet
6 25 (4.33%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.60%) Kibana
8 14 (2.42%) Progress Chef
9 10 (1.73%) Red Hat Satellite
10 9 (1.56%) Tivoli
11 8 (1.38%) CA Single Sign-On
11 8 (1.38%) CA Wily
12 7 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (1.04%) SCCM
14 5 (0.87%) Dell DRAC
14 5 (0.87%) ITRS Geneos
14 5 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
14 5 (0.87%) NetBackup
15 4 (0.69%) HAProxy
15 4 (0.69%) Nagios
Vendors
1 178 (30.80%) Oracle
2 94 (16.26%) Splunk
3 73 (12.63%) Microsoft
4 39 (6.75%) IBM
5 32 (5.54%) ServiceNow
6 26 (4.50%) Red Hat
7 21 (3.63%) AppDynamics
8 16 (2.77%) Cisco
9 15 (2.60%) Dynatrace
9 15 (2.60%) VMware
10 9 (1.56%) webMethods
11 8 (1.38%) Broadcom
11 8 (1.38%) Confluent
11 8 (1.38%) CrowdStrike
11 8 (1.38%) CyberArk
11 8 (1.38%) F5
12 7 (1.21%) Dell
13 6 (1.04%) Ab Initio
13 6 (1.04%) Fujitsu
13 6 (1.04%) Veritas