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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 183 122 114
Rank change year-on-year -61 -8 -31
Contract jobs citing Unix 580 656 908
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 2.09% 2.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.49% 14.94% 14.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 392 385 652
10th Percentile £204 £350 £363
25th Percentile £373 £425 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £618 £675 £665
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £446 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -6.11% -5.00% -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 10
10th Percentile £26.28 £38.70 £21.88
25th Percentile £26.31 £40.50 £24.31
Median hourly rate £27.75 £41.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year -32.32% -27.11% -13.13%
75th Percentile £29.31 £59.00 £75.00
90th Percentile £29.43 £69.50 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £47.00 £61.50
% change year-on-year - -23.58% +11.82%

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 4,642 4,391 6,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.69% 14.00% 14.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,060 2,736 4,335
10th Percentile £175 £200 £180
25th Percentile £264 £317 £298
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £411 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -3.29% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 164 313
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.25 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.36% +10.83% +20.00%
75th Percentile £61.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £70.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £30.78 £25.18
% change year-on-year -18.78% +22.24% +11.91%

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 13 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 13 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 -53 481 £475 -13.64% 192
UK excluding London -42 298 £446 -6.11% 159
London -44 227 £565 -5.83% 67
Work from Home -71 158 £454 -9.20% 127
North of England -25 85 £466 -28.66% 20
South East -11 81 £208 -52.19% 61
Midlands -36 66 £483 -3.34% 22
West Midlands -28 61 £484 -8.43% 13
Scotland -20 54 £450 - 7
North West -2 48 £463 -24.49% 10
Yorkshire -34 35 £495 -29.29% 7
South West -32 10 £700 +33.33% 22
East Midlands -19 5 £437 +23.80% 9
North East -7 4 £500 -9.09% 3
East of England -29 3 £500 +25.00% 22
Wales -6 1 £265 +64.60% 6
Northern Ireland -8 1 - - 2

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 41 (7.07%) Apache
2 39 (6.72%) WebLogic
3 27 (4.66%) Confluence
4 19 (3.28%) SharePoint
5 18 (3.10%) JBoss
6 10 (1.72%) Tomcat
7 9 (1.55%) IIS
7 9 (1.55%) Tuxedo
7 9 (1.55%) WebSphere
8 8 (1.38%) iPlanet
8 8 (1.38%) WebSphere Application Server
9 6 (1.03%) nginx
9 6 (1.03%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 6 (1.03%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.86%) Apache Spark
10 5 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.34%) NetWeaver
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.34%) SAS
12 1 (0.17%) OpenStack
Applications
1 18 (3.10%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (1.55%) Oracle EBS
1 9 (1.55%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.86%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.69%) Oracle Assets
3 4 (0.69%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.52%) ION MarketView
4 3 (0.52%) Kondor
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle BPM
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.34%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.17%) Finacle
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 154 (26.55%) AWS
2 107 (18.45%) Azure
3 32 (5.52%) GCP
4 28 (4.83%) GitHub
5 24 (4.14%) SaaS
6 21 (3.62%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (3.28%) Azure Monitor
7 19 (3.28%) Sauce Labs
8 16 (2.76%) Amazon EC2
8 16 (2.76%) OpenShift
9 14 (2.41%) Amazon S3
10 11 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 11 (1.90%) Azure DevOps
10 11 (1.90%) Cloud Computing
10 11 (1.90%) Serverless
11 10 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (1.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 9 (1.55%) Microsoft 365
12 9 (1.55%) OCI
13 7 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 35 (6.03%) Firewall
2 26 (4.48%) HTTP
2 26 (4.48%) TCP/IP
3 24 (4.14%) DNS
4 19 (3.28%) Wireless
5 16 (2.76%) SSH
6 14 (2.41%) Network Security
6 14 (2.41%) SSL
7 10 (1.72%) Kerberos
8 7 (1.21%) SAN
9 6 (1.03%) DHCP
10 5 (0.86%) FTP
11 4 (0.69%) FIX Connectivity
11 4 (0.69%) VPN
11 4 (0.69%) Wireshark
12 3 (0.52%) Broadband
12 3 (0.52%) GPRS
12 3 (0.52%) GSM
12 3 (0.52%) Unified Communications
12 3 (0.52%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (9.66%) Relational Database
2 55 (9.48%) MySQL
3 52 (8.97%) MongoDB
4 42 (7.24%) Oracle Database
5 28 (4.83%) NoSQL
6 24 (4.14%) Elasticsearch
6 24 (4.14%) PostgreSQL
7 16 (2.76%) SQL Server
8 14 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
9 11 (1.90%) Amazon RDS
9 11 (1.90%) Data Lake
9 11 (1.90%) KDB
9 11 (1.90%) Kdb+
10 10 (1.72%) Amazon Redshift
11 8 (1.38%) Big Data
11 8 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 7 (1.21%) Hadoop
13 6 (1.03%) Couchbase
13 6 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
14 5 (0.86%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 61 (10.52%) Jenkins
2 51 (8.79%) Git
3 41 (7.07%) JIRA
4 28 (4.83%) Eclipse
5 27 (4.66%) GitLab
6 23 (3.97%) JUnit
7 22 (3.79%) Xcode
8 21 (3.62%) Mockito
9 20 (3.45%) Browser DevTools
10 19 (3.28%) Android Studio
11 15 (2.59%) Sonatype Nexus
12 13 (2.24%) Selenium
13 12 (2.07%) Bitbucket
14 11 (1.90%) Maven
15 9 (1.55%) IntelliJ
16 8 (1.38%) Bitbucket Server
16 8 (1.38%) CA Release Automation
16 8 (1.38%) MSI
17 7 (1.21%) SoapUI
18 6 (1.03%) Gradle
General
1 183 (31.55%) Social Skills
2 154 (26.55%) Finance
3 69 (11.90%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (9.48%) Banking
5 36 (6.21%) Public Sector
6 26 (4.48%) Front Office
7 14 (2.41%) Financial Institution
8 13 (2.24%) Influencing Skills
8 13 (2.24%) Investment Banking
9 11 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.21%) Legal
10 7 (1.21%) Military
11 5 (0.86%) Law
12 3 (0.52%) Billing
12 3 (0.52%) General Ledger
12 3 (0.52%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.52%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.34%) Back Office
13 2 (0.34%) Marketing
13 2 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 107 (18.45%) Developer
2 101 (17.41%) Senior
3 47 (8.10%) Technical Support
4 45 (7.76%) Java Developer
5 41 (7.07%) Analyst
6 34 (5.86%) DevOps Engineer
7 32 (5.52%) Support Engineer
7 32 (5.52%) Unix Engineer
8 30 (5.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 28 (4.83%) Linux Engineer
10 27 (4.66%) Technical Engineer
11 26 (4.48%) Senior Developer
12 25 (4.31%) Site Engineer
12 25 (4.31%) Technical Support Engineer
13 24 (4.14%) Software Engineer
14 22 (3.79%) Consultant
14 22 (3.79%) Kafka Engineer
15 21 (3.62%) Platform Engineer
16 20 (3.45%) C++ Software Engineer
16 20 (3.45%) UX Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (14.31%) Kafka
2 39 (6.72%) React
3 37 (6.38%) REST
4 35 (6.03%) SOAP
5 30 (5.17%) AngularJS
6 29 (5.00%) CSS
7 24 (4.14%) Middleware
8 23 (3.97%) XML
9 21 (3.62%) HTML
10 20 (3.45%) ActiveMQ
10 20 (3.45%) Ajax
10 20 (3.45%) GraphQL
11 19 (3.28%) JSON
12 18 (3.10%) JAX-RS
12 18 (3.10%) Spring
13 15 (2.59%) Elastic Stack
13 15 (2.59%) Hibernate
14 13 (2.24%) HTML5
14 13 (2.24%) J2EE
15 12 (2.07%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 32 (5.52%) Management Information System
2 22 (3.79%) Mobile App
3 21 (3.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 20 (3.45%) Onboarding
5 17 (2.93%) Cloud Native
6 14 (2.41%) Linux Command Line
7 13 (2.24%) Algorithms
7 13 (2.24%) Data Centre
8 12 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
8 12 (2.07%) Replication
8 12 (2.07%) Security Posture
8 12 (2.07%) Tandem
9 11 (1.90%) Equities
9 11 (1.90%) Fixed Income
10 9 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.55%) Greenfield Project
11 8 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
11 8 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.38%) Legacy Applications
11 8 (1.38%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 401 (69.14%) Linux
2 196 (33.79%) Windows
3 28 (4.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (3.97%) Mac OS X
5 21 (3.62%) Android
6 20 (3.45%) Solaris
7 18 (3.10%) Windows Server
8 13 (2.24%) Mac OS
9 12 (2.07%) CentOS
10 5 (0.86%) AIX
11 4 (0.69%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.34%) VMS
12 2 (0.34%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.34%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (28.45%) Agile
2 114 (19.66%) Problem-Solving
3 110 (18.97%) DevOps
4 98 (16.90%) CI/CD
5 72 (12.41%) Incident Response
6 68 (11.72%) OO
7 63 (10.86%) Observability
8 62 (10.69%) Computer Science
8 62 (10.69%) Microservices
9 56 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
10 55 (9.48%) Software Engineering
11 54 (9.31%) Infrastructure as Code
12 53 (9.14%) Test Automation
13 50 (8.62%) Containerisation
14 49 (8.45%) Analytics
15 48 (8.28%) Migration
15 48 (8.28%) TDD
16 45 (7.76%) Incident Management
17 44 (7.59%) Change Management
17 44 (7.59%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 232 (40.00%) Python
2 218 (37.59%) SQL
3 156 (26.90%) Java
4 98 (16.90%) Shell Script
5 92 (15.86%) Perl
6 75 (12.93%) Bash
7 59 (10.17%) JavaScript
8 47 (8.10%) C++
9 38 (6.55%) PowerShell
10 30 (5.17%) C#
11 26 (4.48%) PL/SQL
12 15 (2.59%) Go
13 12 (2.07%) Scala
14 11 (1.90%) Groovy
14 11 (1.90%) Korn
15 9 (1.55%) PHP
15 9 (1.55%) Search Processing Language
16 8 (1.38%) TypeScript
17 4 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
17 4 (0.69%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 111 (19.14%) Security Cleared
2 89 (15.34%) Degree
3 77 (13.28%) SC Cleared
4 51 (8.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (4.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (2.24%) AWS Certification
7 11 (1.90%) DV Cleared
8 10 (1.72%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 9 (1.55%) CISSP
10 6 (1.03%) OSCP
11 5 (0.86%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (0.86%) GPEN
11 5 (0.86%) GWAPT
11 5 (0.86%) ISTQB
11 5 (0.86%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 4 (0.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.69%) MCP
12 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Certification
12 4 (0.69%) RHCE
12 4 (0.69%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.28%) SLA
2 13 (2.24%) QA
3 9 (1.55%) Data Quality
4 5 (0.86%) NCSC
5 4 (0.69%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.69%) SOC 2
6 3 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.52%) NIST
6 3 (0.52%) SEPA
7 2 (0.34%) GMP
7 2 (0.34%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.17%) GDPR
8 1 (0.17%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 90 (15.52%) Docker
2 17 (2.93%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.38%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 8 (1.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.03%) KVM
5 5 (0.86%) VMware NSX
6 3 (0.52%) GPFS
6 3 (0.52%) NFS
6 3 (0.52%) QEMU
7 2 (0.34%) GridGain
7 2 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.17%) Ceph
8 1 (0.17%) iptables
8 1 (0.17%) Lustre
8 1 (0.17%) RACF
8 1 (0.17%) Samba
8 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.17%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 79 (13.62%) Kubernetes
2 69 (11.90%) Ansible
2 69 (11.90%) Terraform
3 33 (5.69%) Grafana
4 31 (5.34%) Puppet
5 19 (3.28%) Prometheus
6 14 (2.41%) Kibana
7 12 (2.07%) Progress Chef
8 10 (1.72%) Red Hat Satellite
9 9 (1.55%) Tivoli
10 8 (1.38%) CA Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.38%) CA Wily
11 7 (1.21%) SCCM
11 7 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.03%) ITRS Geneos
12 6 (1.03%) Jamf Pro
13 5 (0.86%) Dell DRAC
13 5 (0.86%) Packer
14 4 (0.69%) Nagios
14 4 (0.69%) Nessus
Vendors
1 180 (31.03%) Oracle
2 107 (18.45%) Splunk
3 79 (13.62%) Microsoft
4 39 (6.72%) IBM
5 35 (6.03%) ServiceNow
6 29 (5.00%) AppDynamics
7 26 (4.48%) Red Hat
8 24 (4.14%) Dynatrace
9 23 (3.97%) Cisco
10 17 (2.93%) VMware
11 12 (2.07%) CyberArk
12 10 (1.72%) F5
13 9 (1.55%) webMethods
14 8 (1.38%) Broadcom
14 8 (1.38%) Confluent
14 8 (1.38%) CrowdStrike
14 8 (1.38%) MuleSoft
15 7 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
15 7 (1.21%) Dell
15 7 (1.21%) Google