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 17 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 139 142
Rank change year-on-year -85 +3 -61
Contract jobs citing Unix 511 595 751
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 2.03% 1.69%
As % of the Operating Systems category 10.77% 14.13% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 335 348 509
10th Percentile £257 £356 £330
25th Percentile £392 £423 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £454 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -12.69% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £565 £632 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £429 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -9.68% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 9 22
10th Percentile - £39.60 £22.01
25th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £27.88 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.90% +31.25% -37.98%
75th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £53.95 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -58.29% +31.88% -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 4,744 4,212 6,020
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.99% 14.34% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,107 2,764 4,024
10th Percentile £180 £200 £181
25th Percentile £283 £318 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £452
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +5.20% -12.33%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £657 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £450 £430
% change year-on-year -8.33% +4.65% -9.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 157 403
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.60 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.54% +24.44% -15.09%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £59.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £22.50
% change year-on-year -8.76% +9.60% -13.46%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 17 March 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 -69 443 £460 -12.38% 99
UK excluding London -84 264 £429 -9.68% 73
London -53 206 £538 -4.44% 46
Work from Home -86 145 £450 -9.18% 72
North of England -52 86 £464 -11.67% 23
South East -26 68 £320 -33.33% 22
North West -5 67 £467 -11.05% 14
Midlands -27 67 £444 -3.59% 11
West Midlands -33 63 £444 -4.52% 7
Scotland -39 29 £420 -8.15% 4
Yorkshire -67 18 £460 -16.36% 5
South West -33 8 £700 +27.27% 3
Wales -7 5 £265 +62.04% 2
East Midlands -34 4 £478 +13.02% 4
East of England -42 3 £440 -2.22% 5
North East -12 2 £563 - 4

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 23 (4.50%) Confluence
2 22 (4.31%) WebLogic
3 21 (4.11%) Apache
4 16 (3.13%) Tuxedo
5 15 (2.94%) SharePoint
6 12 (2.35%) Apache Spark
7 11 (2.15%) SAS
8 8 (1.57%) CICS
9 6 (1.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.98%) JBoss
10 5 (0.98%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.98%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.78%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.78%) nginx
11 4 (0.78%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.59%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.39%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.39%) IBM HTTP Server
13 2 (0.39%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 12 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.20%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.17%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.17%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.98%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.78%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.59%) Oracle BRM
4 3 (0.59%) Summit
5 2 (0.39%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.39%) Kondor
5 2 (0.39%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 98 (19.18%) AWS
2 74 (14.48%) Azure
3 27 (5.28%) GitHub
4 17 (3.33%) GCP
5 15 (2.94%) SaaS
6 14 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
7 13 (2.54%) Serverless
8 11 (2.15%) Amazon S3
8 11 (2.15%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
9 10 (1.96%) Sauce Labs
10 9 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 9 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
10 9 (1.76%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (1.76%) OpenShift
11 8 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
11 8 (1.57%) Entra ID
11 8 (1.57%) Power Platform
12 7 (1.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 7 (1.37%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.65%) Firewall
2 18 (3.52%) DNS
3 15 (2.94%) SSH
4 14 (2.74%) TCP/IP
4 14 (2.74%) Wireless
5 13 (2.54%) SAN
6 12 (2.35%) HTTP
7 11 (2.15%) Network Security
8 8 (1.57%) InfiniBand
8 8 (1.57%) NAS
9 7 (1.37%) Ethernet
9 7 (1.37%) NetScaler
10 6 (1.17%) VPN
11 5 (0.98%) Ethernet VPN
11 5 (0.98%) FTP
11 5 (0.98%) SSL
12 4 (0.78%) DHCP
12 4 (0.78%) FIX Connectivity
12 4 (0.78%) MPLS
12 4 (0.78%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (9.39%) MySQL
2 41 (8.02%) Relational Database
2 41 (8.02%) SQL Server
3 39 (7.63%) Oracle Database
4 37 (7.24%) MongoDB
5 28 (5.48%) PostgreSQL
6 20 (3.91%) NoSQL
7 17 (3.33%) KDB
7 17 (3.33%) Kdb+
8 14 (2.74%) Big Data
9 13 (2.54%) Elasticsearch
10 12 (2.35%) Data Warehouse
10 12 (2.35%) Metadata
11 11 (2.15%) Data Lake
11 11 (2.15%) Hadoop
12 10 (1.96%) Tick Data
13 9 (1.76%) DataStage
13 9 (1.76%) DB2
14 8 (1.57%) Pentaho
15 7 (1.37%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 45 (8.81%) Jenkins
2 39 (7.63%) Git
2 39 (7.63%) JIRA
3 37 (7.24%) GitLab
4 14 (2.74%) Eclipse
4 14 (2.74%) JUnit
5 12 (2.35%) Bitbucket
5 12 (2.35%) Mockito
6 11 (2.15%) MSI
6 11 (2.15%) Xcode
7 10 (1.96%) Android Studio
7 10 (1.96%) Browser DevTools
8 9 (1.76%) Selenium
9 7 (1.37%) Maven
10 5 (0.98%) SoapUI
10 5 (0.98%) Toad
11 4 (0.78%) Cucumber
11 4 (0.78%) IntelliJ
11 4 (0.78%) ScriptRunner
11 4 (0.78%) Subversion
General
1 138 (27.01%) Finance
2 132 (25.83%) Social Skills
3 61 (11.94%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (11.15%) Banking
5 45 (8.81%) Public Sector
6 22 (4.31%) Front Office
7 17 (3.33%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (3.13%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (1.57%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.37%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.17%) Advertising
11 6 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.98%) Law
12 5 (0.98%) Legal
13 4 (0.78%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.78%) Retail
14 3 (0.59%) Billing
14 3 (0.59%) Military
14 3 (0.59%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 93 (18.20%) Developer
2 69 (13.50%) Senior
3 44 (8.61%) Analyst
4 35 (6.85%) Java Developer
5 34 (6.65%) Support Engineer
6 32 (6.26%) Unix Engineer
7 27 (5.28%) Technical Support
8 26 (5.09%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 25 (4.89%) Linux Engineer
10 23 (4.50%) Data Engineer
10 23 (4.50%) DBA
11 22 (4.31%) Oracle DBA
11 22 (4.31%) Site Engineer
12 21 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
13 20 (3.91%) Software Engineer
14 18 (3.52%) Administrator
14 18 (3.52%) Kafka Engineer
14 18 (3.52%) Lead
15 17 (3.33%) Unix Linux Engineer
16 16 (3.13%) C++ Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (11.94%) Kafka
2 34 (6.65%) REST
3 26 (5.09%) XML
4 25 (4.89%) Middleware
5 22 (4.31%) React
6 21 (4.11%) SOAP
7 19 (3.72%) JSON
8 17 (3.33%) CSS
9 16 (3.13%) AngularJS
10 15 (2.94%) Spring
11 14 (2.74%) Elastic Stack
12 13 (2.54%) Oracle GoldenGate
13 12 (2.35%) HTML
14 11 (2.15%) ActiveMQ
14 11 (2.15%) JAX-RS
15 10 (1.96%) Ajax
15 10 (1.96%) FIX Protocol
15 10 (1.96%) GraphQL
15 10 (1.96%) Spring Boot
16 9 (1.76%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 28 (5.48%) Management Information System
2 21 (4.11%) Cloud Native
3 20 (3.91%) Linux Command Line
4 19 (3.72%) Onboarding
5 18 (3.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 16 (3.13%) Data Centre
7 15 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
8 12 (2.35%) Equities
8 12 (2.35%) Fixed Income
9 11 (2.15%) Derivative
9 11 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
10 10 (1.96%) Algorithms
10 10 (1.96%) Mobile App
10 10 (1.96%) Security Posture
11 9 (1.76%) Mainframe
11 9 (1.76%) Public Cloud
12 8 (1.57%) BYOD
12 8 (1.57%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.57%) VSAM
13 7 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 328 (64.19%) Linux
2 156 (30.53%) Windows
3 28 (5.48%) Windows Server
4 23 (4.50%) AIX
4 23 (4.50%) Solaris
5 20 (3.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 13 (2.54%) Mac OS X
7 10 (1.96%) Android
8 6 (1.17%) Mac OS
9 5 (0.98%) CentOS
10 3 (0.59%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.39%) VMS
12 1 (0.20%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.20%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.20%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.20%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (26.81%) Agile
2 104 (20.35%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (17.42%) DevOps
4 79 (15.46%) CI/CD
5 56 (10.96%) Migration
5 56 (10.96%) Observability
6 54 (10.57%) Computer Science
7 52 (10.18%) ITIL
8 49 (9.59%) Software Engineering
9 48 (9.39%) Incident Response
10 46 (9.00%) Containerisation
11 44 (8.61%) Data Modelling
11 44 (8.61%) Microservices
11 44 (8.61%) OO
11 44 (8.61%) Performance Tuning
12 41 (8.02%) Infrastructure as Code
13 40 (7.83%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 39 (7.63%) Analytics
14 39 (7.63%) Change Management
15 38 (7.44%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 197 (38.55%) SQL
2 181 (35.42%) Python
3 128 (25.05%) Java
4 94 (18.40%) Shell Script
5 64 (12.52%) Bash
6 61 (11.94%) Perl
7 37 (7.24%) C++
7 37 (7.24%) JavaScript
8 36 (7.05%) PowerShell
9 33 (6.46%) PL/SQL
10 26 (5.09%) C#
11 24 (4.70%) Korn
12 10 (1.96%) PHP
13 9 (1.76%) Go
13 9 (1.76%) Scala
14 8 (1.57%) COBOL
15 3 (0.59%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.39%) PromQL
16 2 (0.39%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 126 (24.66%) Security Cleared
2 97 (18.98%) SC Cleared
3 74 (14.48%) Degree
4 40 (7.83%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (3.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.57%) CISSP
7 6 (1.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 6 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.17%) OSCP
8 5 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
8 5 (0.98%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.98%) GPEN
8 5 (0.98%) GWAPT
8 5 (0.98%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.98%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (0.98%) MCSA
8 5 (0.98%) MCSE
9 4 (0.78%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.59%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.59%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.52%) SLA
2 16 (3.13%) QA
3 13 (2.54%) Data Quality
4 9 (1.76%) NIST
5 7 (1.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.59%) FATCA
6 3 (0.59%) GMP
6 3 (0.59%) SEPA
7 2 (0.39%) GDPR
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.39%) NCSC
7 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.20%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 66 (12.92%) Docker
2 16 (3.13%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.74%) Oracle RAC
4 11 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
5 9 (1.76%) KVM
6 6 (1.17%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.17%) NFS
6 6 (1.17%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.98%) GPFS
8 4 (0.78%) HDFS
9 3 (0.59%) Firmware
9 3 (0.59%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.59%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.39%) Postfix
10 2 (0.39%) SRDF
10 2 (0.39%) Varnish
10 2 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.39%) vSphere
11 1 (0.20%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.20%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 72 (14.09%) Kubernetes
2 63 (12.33%) Ansible
3 49 (9.59%) Terraform
4 39 (7.63%) Grafana
5 24 (4.70%) Puppet
6 23 (4.50%) Prometheus
7 16 (3.13%) Oracle RMAN
8 15 (2.94%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 12 (2.35%) Kibana
10 8 (1.57%) Progress Chef
11 7 (1.37%) NetBackup
12 6 (1.17%) Control-M
12 6 (1.17%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.17%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (1.17%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.98%) CASB
13 5 (0.98%) Dell DRAC
13 5 (0.98%) Nessus
13 5 (0.98%) Salt
13 5 (0.98%) SCCM
Vendors
1 161 (31.51%) Oracle
2 61 (11.94%) Splunk
3 53 (10.37%) Microsoft
4 42 (8.22%) IBM
5 30 (5.87%) ServiceNow
6 20 (3.91%) VMware
7 16 (3.13%) Cisco
8 15 (2.94%) Red Hat
9 12 (2.35%) CyberArk
10 11 (2.15%) Talend
11 10 (1.96%) Informatica
11 10 (1.96%) Remedy
12 9 (1.76%) Fujitsu
13 8 (1.57%) Aruba
13 8 (1.57%) Dell
13 8 (1.57%) Sybase
13 8 (1.57%) Veritas
14 7 (1.37%) Ab Initio
14 7 (1.37%) AppDynamics
14 7 (1.37%) CheckPoint