Unix Job Trends

Unix
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Unix skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 340 243 244
Rank change year-on-year -97 +1 -45
Permanent jobs citing Unix 358 664 831
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.57% 1.25% 1.27%
As % of the Operating Systems category 7.08% 8.33% 8.31%
Number of salaries quoted 198 252 565
10th Percentile £40,880 £41,250 £41,500
25th Percentile £46,469 £50,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £62,127 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.03% -4.42% -
75th Percentile £78,790 £80,000 £84,056
90th Percentile £88,750 £93,778 £96,539
UK excluding London median annual salary £56,430 £60,000 £59,556
% change year-on-year -5.95% +0.75% +19.11%

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 permanent job vacancies requiring operating system skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 5,054 7,973 9,995
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 8.08% 15.01% 15.26%
Number of salaries quoted 3,694 4,469 8,305
10th Percentile £27,000 £28,250 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £36,250 £32,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £50,042 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.07% +0.08% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £72,500 £66,750
90th Percentile £85,000 £88,950 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £38,000 £45,000 £44,274
% change year-on-year -15.56% +1.64% -1.61%

Unix
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Unix relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Unix job vacancy trend in the UK

Unix
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Unix.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Unix

Unix
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Unix over the 6 months to 24 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Unix in the UK

Unix
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Unix within the UK over the 6 months to 24 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -70 319 £58,000 -3.33% 167
UK excluding London -129 176 £56,430 -5.95% 163
London +19 158 £76,250 +10.02% 31
Work from Home -19 139 £70,000 +1.00% 62
South East +21 48 £58,000 +11.54% 44
South West +21 43 £57,500 -20.13% 22
East of England +10 37 £43,085 -25.07% 24
North of England -99 17 £55,000 +10.00% 31
Midlands -51 12 £73,801 +29.48% 24
West Midlands -20 9 £74,401 +24.00% 11
Scotland -48 9 £73,801 +5.95% 10
Wales +1 8 £57,750 +15.50% 9
Yorkshire -41 6 £25,750 -69.80% 11
North West -65 6 £64,401 +28.80% 15
North East -5 5 £73,801 +47.60% 5
East Midlands -14 3 £40,000 -27.27% 13
Northern Ireland -21 2 £73,801 -18.00% 5

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 36 (10.06%) Microsoft Exchange
2 26 (7.26%) Exchange Server 2003
3 22 (6.15%) WebSphere
4 20 (5.59%) Tomcat
5 16 (4.47%) WebSphere Application Server
6 9 (2.51%) Apache Spark
7 5 (1.40%) Anypoint
7 5 (1.40%) Confluence
7 5 (1.40%) WebLogic
8 4 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
8 4 (1.12%) IIS
8 4 (1.12%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.84%) Apache
9 3 (0.84%) nginx
9 3 (0.84%) WebLogic Portal
10 1 (0.28%) NetWeaver
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.28%) SharePoint
Applications
1 20 (5.59%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (4.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) EngageOne
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.96%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.40%) Shopify
3 4 (1.12%) NEC Housing
3 4 (1.12%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.84%) Fidessa
4 3 (0.84%) Primavera
5 2 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.28%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.28%) TIBCO iProcess
Cloud Services
1 133 (37.15%) AWS
2 77 (21.51%) Azure
3 52 (14.53%) GCP
4 39 (10.89%) Pulumi
5 38 (10.61%) AWS CloudFormation
6 26 (7.26%) Amazon ECR
7 21 (5.87%) PaaS
7 21 (5.87%) Serverless
8 20 (5.59%) Amazon ECS
8 20 (5.59%) dbt
9 19 (5.31%) AWS Lambda
9 19 (5.31%) GitHub
10 18 (5.03%) Amazon EC2
11 17 (4.75%) SaaS
12 16 (4.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 15 (4.19%) Amazon S3
14 14 (3.91%) Microsoft 365
15 13 (3.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 12 (3.35%) Amazon EKS
16 12 (3.35%) Amazon ElastiCache
Communications & Networking
1 36 (10.06%) TCP/IP
2 25 (6.98%) DHCP
2 25 (6.98%) DNS
3 24 (6.70%) SSL
4 21 (5.87%) Broadband
4 21 (5.87%) Firewall
5 12 (3.35%) VPN
6 11 (3.07%) WAN
7 9 (2.51%) SAN
7 9 (2.51%) VLAN
8 8 (2.23%) 5G
8 8 (2.23%) SD-WAN
9 7 (1.96%) MPLS
9 7 (1.96%) Network Security
10 6 (1.68%) Wi-Fi
10 6 (1.68%) Wireshark
11 5 (1.40%) FIX Connectivity
11 5 (1.40%) HTTPS
12 4 (1.12%) SMTP
12 4 (1.12%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (12.85%) PostgreSQL
2 36 (10.06%) Oracle Database
2 36 (10.06%) Relational Database
3 31 (8.66%) Amazon RDS
4 27 (7.54%) NoSQL
4 27 (7.54%) Oracle Database 10g
5 22 (6.15%) Elasticsearch
5 22 (6.15%) SQL Server
6 20 (5.59%) Redis
7 19 (5.31%) DB2
7 19 (5.31%) RDBMS
8 11 (3.07%) Big Data
9 8 (2.23%) Hadoop
9 8 (2.23%) Power BI
9 8 (2.23%) Tableau
10 7 (1.96%) Oracle Reports
11 6 (1.68%) Amazon Redshift
11 6 (1.68%) FileMaker
11 6 (1.68%) MySQL
12 5 (1.40%) Apache Hive
Development Applications
1 26 (7.26%) Git
2 19 (5.31%) Jaeger
3 12 (3.35%) Jenkins
3 12 (3.35%) LabVIEW
4 9 (2.51%) GitLab
5 7 (1.96%) JIRA
6 4 (1.12%) Selenium
6 4 (1.12%) Toad
7 3 (0.84%) Cypress.io
7 3 (0.84%) JMeter
7 3 (0.84%) Oracle APEX
7 3 (0.84%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.84%) Postman
8 2 (0.56%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.56%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.56%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.56%) Mocha
8 2 (0.56%) SoapUI
8 2 (0.56%) webpack
9 1 (0.28%) Android Studio
General
1 81 (22.63%) Finance
2 69 (19.27%) Social Skills
3 39 (10.89%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (9.50%) Banking
5 30 (8.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 19 (5.31%) Public Sector
7 16 (4.47%) German Language
7 16 (4.47%) Presentation Skills
8 14 (3.91%) Electronics
8 14 (3.91%) Telecoms
9 12 (3.35%) Investment Banking
10 9 (2.51%) Law
10 9 (2.51%) Manufacturing
11 7 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.68%) Legal
13 5 (1.40%) Financial Institution
14 4 (1.12%) Back Office
14 4 (1.12%) Front Office
14 4 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (1.12%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 65 (18.16%) Senior
2 32 (8.94%) Support Engineer
3 29 (8.10%) Applications Support
3 29 (8.10%) Linux Support
4 27 (7.54%) Lead
5 25 (6.98%) 3rd Line Support
5 25 (6.98%) Linux Engineer
6 24 (6.70%) Administrator
7 23 (6.42%) Systems Support
8 22 (6.15%) Analyst
8 22 (6.15%) Infrastructure Support
9 21 (5.87%) Platform Engineer
10 20 (5.59%) Developer
10 20 (5.59%) Systems Administrator
11 19 (5.31%) Unix Support
12 18 (5.03%) Cloud Engineer
13 15 (4.19%) Test Engineer
14 14 (3.91%) Verification Engineer
15 13 (3.63%) Linux Support Engineer
15 13 (3.63%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (10.34%) JSON
2 36 (10.06%) XML
3 33 (9.22%) HTML
4 29 (8.10%) Elastic Stack
4 29 (8.10%) Regular Expression
5 22 (6.15%) LDAP
6 20 (5.59%) Django
7 19 (5.31%) OpenTelemetry
8 18 (5.03%) WebSphere MQ
9 16 (4.47%) LAPP Stack
10 12 (3.35%) pytest
10 12 (3.35%) SOAP
11 10 (2.79%) Middleware
11 10 (2.79%) REST
12 9 (2.51%) FIX Protocol
12 9 (2.51%) OAuth
13 8 (2.23%) Node.js
14 7 (1.96%) RESTful
15 6 (1.68%) OAuth2
16 5 (1.40%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 69 (19.27%) Linux Command Line
2 34 (9.50%) Onboarding
3 26 (7.26%) Management Information System
4 18 (5.03%) e-Learning
5 15 (4.19%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (3.07%) IoT
6 11 (3.07%) Self-Motivation
7 10 (2.79%) Security Posture
8 9 (2.51%) Data Centre
9 8 (2.23%) Self-Driving Car
10 7 (1.96%) Analytical Mindset
10 7 (1.96%) Clustering
10 7 (1.96%) Hedge funds
11 6 (1.68%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 6 (1.68%) Low-Code
11 6 (1.68%) PKI
12 5 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 5 (1.40%) Replication
13 4 (1.12%) Device Driver
13 4 (1.12%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 238 (66.48%) Linux
2 114 (31.84%) Windows
3 44 (12.29%) Solaris
4 37 (10.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (7.26%) HPUX
5 26 (7.26%) Windows Server 2003
6 22 (6.15%) Windows 7
6 22 (6.15%) Windows Server 2008
7 16 (4.47%) Windows Server
8 11 (3.07%) Debian
9 9 (2.51%) Mac OS
10 6 (1.68%) AIX
10 6 (1.68%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.84%) CentOS
12 2 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.28%) Android
13 1 (0.28%) CoreOS
13 1 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (23.46%) DevOps
2 76 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
3 69 (19.27%) Infrastructure as Code
4 55 (15.36%) Agile
5 54 (15.08%) AI
6 53 (14.80%) ITIL
7 50 (13.97%) CI/CD
7 50 (13.97%) High Availability
8 38 (10.61%) Data Analysis
8 38 (10.61%) Incident Management
9 37 (10.34%) Containerisation
10 36 (10.06%) Computer Science
11 35 (9.78%) Change Management
12 34 (9.50%) Test Automation
13 32 (8.94%) Mentoring
14 31 (8.66%) Analytics
15 29 (8.10%) LLM
16 28 (7.82%) Observability
16 28 (7.82%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 28 (7.82%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 211 (58.94%) Python
2 66 (18.44%) SQL
3 63 (17.60%) Bash
4 47 (13.13%) Java
4 47 (13.13%) JavaScript
5 43 (12.01%) PowerShell
6 27 (7.54%) Perl
7 24 (6.70%) Go
8 21 (5.87%) Shell Script
9 15 (4.19%) C#
10 14 (3.91%) MATLAB
11 11 (3.07%) C++
12 10 (2.79%) C
13 9 (2.51%) R
14 8 (2.23%) Korn
14 8 (2.23%) TypeScript
15 5 (1.40%) VB
16 4 (1.12%) Fortran
16 4 (1.12%) PL/SQL
17 3 (0.84%) Scala
Qualifications
1 112 (31.28%) Degree
2 107 (29.89%) Security Cleared
3 89 (24.86%) SC Cleared
4 49 (13.69%) AWS Certification
4 49 (13.69%) DV Cleared
5 29 (8.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 23 (6.42%) ITIL Certification
7 22 (6.15%) CCNA
7 22 (6.15%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (5.03%) CISSP
9 15 (4.19%) CCNP
10 12 (3.35%) HND
11 8 (2.23%) CISA
12 7 (1.96%) CCSK
12 7 (1.96%) Master's Degree
12 7 (1.96%) Network+ Certification
12 7 (1.96%) PhD
13 6 (1.68%) GCFA
13 6 (1.68%) GCIA
13 6 (1.68%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (15.08%) SLA
2 12 (3.35%) GDPR
2 12 (3.35%) QA
3 9 (2.51%) NIST
4 7 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 4 (1.12%) COBIT
6 4 (1.12%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.56%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.28%) MiFID
8 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 70 (19.55%) Docker
2 47 (13.13%) Active Directory
3 26 (7.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.40%) Veritas Cluster Server
5 4 (1.12%) Firmware
6 3 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
6 3 (0.84%) XenApp
6 3 (0.84%) XenDesktop
7 2 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.28%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 70 (19.55%) Terraform
2 63 (17.60%) Ansible
3 50 (13.97%) Kubernetes
4 27 (7.54%) Prometheus
5 20 (5.59%) Argo
6 19 (5.31%) Kustomize
7 17 (4.75%) Grafana
8 12 (3.35%) AWS Copilot
9 6 (1.68%) Jamf Pro
10 5 (1.40%) SCCM
11 4 (1.12%) Control-M
11 4 (1.12%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (1.12%) Puppet
12 3 (0.84%) Netcool
12 3 (0.84%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 3 (0.84%) Podman
12 3 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
13 2 (0.56%) Packer
13 2 (0.56%) Suricata
14 1 (0.28%) AirWatch
Vendors
1 66 (18.44%) Google
2 64 (17.88%) Oracle
3 54 (15.08%) VMware
4 50 (13.97%) Microsoft
5 40 (11.17%) Red Hat
6 36 (10.06%) IBM
7 26 (7.26%) Cisco
8 20 (5.59%) SAP
9 17 (4.75%) ServiceNow
10 12 (3.35%) Splunk
11 11 (3.07%) Dell
12 9 (2.51%) Informatica
12 9 (2.51%) Workday
13 8 (2.23%) Fortinet
13 8 (2.23%) IFS
13 8 (2.23%) Juniper
13 8 (2.23%) NetApp
13 8 (2.23%) Palo Alto
14 7 (1.96%) HP
14 7 (1.96%) Symantec