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 2 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 356 242 258
Rank change year-on-year -114 +16 -61
Permanent jobs citing Unix 341 660 864
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.53% 1.28% 1.18%
As % of the Operating Systems category 6.76% 8.48% 7.70%
Number of salaries quoted 186 253 590
10th Percentile £40,015 £41,250 £41,185
25th Percentile £46,779 £50,000 £46,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £61,754 £62,500
Median % change year-on-year -2.84% -1.19% -3.85%
75th Percentile £78,790 £77,500 £82,548
90th Percentile £88,125 £93,778 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £58,000 £60,000 £55,500
% change year-on-year -3.33% +8.11% +11.00%

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 5,046 7,784 11,222
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 7.90% 15.07% 15.37%
Number of salaries quoted 3,684 4,306 9,397
10th Percentile £27,000 £28,500 £26,250
25th Percentile £31,250 £36,250 £32,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £52,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -13.46% +9.47% -9.52%
75th Percentile £65,000 £72,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £90,000 £82,548
UK excluding London median annual salary £38,000 £46,000 £42,500
% change year-on-year -17.39% +8.24% -5.56%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 -79 303 £58,000 -3.33% 105
UK excluding London -137 167 £58,000 -3.33% 86
London +16 150 £75,000 +15.38% 43
Work from Home -31 130 £71,250 +9.62% 53
South East +16 45 £58,000 +11.54% 22
South West +9 41 £58,750 -18.39% 9
East of England +2 34 £43,085 -25.07% 8
North of England -117 17 £55,000 +7.32% 18
Midlands -56 12 £73,801 +29.48% 16
West Midlands -35 9 £74,401 +24.00% 12
Scotland -49 9 £73,801 +5.95% 11
Wales -5 7 £65,000 +13.04% 3
Yorkshire -41 6 £25,750 -69.80% 1
North West -66 6 £64,401 +28.80% 15
North East -8 5 £73,801 +47.60% 2
East Midlands -16 3 £40,000 -27.27% 4
Northern Ireland -20 2 £73,801 -18.00% 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 32 (9.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 24 (7.04%) Exchange Server 2003
3 19 (5.57%) WebSphere
4 18 (5.28%) Tomcat
5 14 (4.11%) WebSphere Application Server
6 9 (2.64%) Apache Spark
7 5 (1.47%) Anypoint
7 5 (1.47%) Confluence
7 5 (1.47%) WebLogic
8 4 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
8 4 (1.17%) IIS
8 4 (1.17%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.88%) WebLogic Portal
10 1 (0.29%) Apache
10 1 (0.29%) NetWeaver
10 1 (0.29%) nginx
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.29%) SharePoint
Applications
1 17 (4.99%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (3.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.29%) EngageOne
3 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (2.05%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.47%) Shopify
3 4 (1.17%) NEC Housing
3 4 (1.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.88%) Fidessa
4 3 (0.88%) Primavera
5 2 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.29%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.29%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.29%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.29%) TIBCO iProcess
Cloud Services
1 131 (38.42%) AWS
2 76 (22.29%) Azure
3 53 (15.54%) GCP
4 39 (11.44%) Pulumi
5 37 (10.85%) AWS CloudFormation
6 25 (7.33%) Amazon ECR
7 22 (6.45%) PaaS
8 20 (5.87%) Amazon ECS
8 20 (5.87%) dbt
8 20 (5.87%) Serverless
9 19 (5.57%) GitHub
10 18 (5.28%) AWS Lambda
11 17 (4.99%) Amazon EC2
12 16 (4.69%) SaaS
12 16 (4.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 14 (4.11%) Amazon S3
14 13 (3.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 13 (3.81%) Microsoft 365
15 12 (3.52%) Amazon ElastiCache
15 12 (3.52%) Amazon OpenSearch
Communications & Networking
1 35 (10.26%) TCP/IP
2 25 (7.33%) DHCP
2 25 (7.33%) DNS
3 21 (6.16%) Broadband
4 20 (5.87%) Firewall
5 19 (5.57%) SSL
6 12 (3.52%) VPN
7 10 (2.93%) WAN
8 9 (2.64%) VLAN
9 8 (2.35%) 5G
9 8 (2.35%) SD-WAN
10 7 (2.05%) MPLS
11 6 (1.76%) Network Security
11 6 (1.76%) SAN
11 6 (1.76%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (1.76%) Wireshark
12 5 (1.47%) FIX Connectivity
13 4 (1.17%) Kerberos
14 3 (0.88%) Modbus
14 3 (0.88%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (12.61%) PostgreSQL
2 35 (10.26%) Oracle Database
2 35 (10.26%) Relational Database
3 30 (8.80%) Amazon RDS
4 27 (7.92%) NoSQL
5 25 (7.33%) Oracle Database 10g
6 22 (6.45%) Elasticsearch
7 21 (6.16%) SQL Server
8 20 (5.87%) Redis
9 19 (5.57%) RDBMS
10 17 (4.99%) DB2
11 11 (3.23%) Big Data
12 8 (2.35%) Hadoop
13 7 (2.05%) Oracle Reports
14 6 (1.76%) Amazon Redshift
14 6 (1.76%) FileMaker
14 6 (1.76%) MySQL
14 6 (1.76%) Power BI
14 6 (1.76%) Tableau
15 5 (1.47%) Apache Hive
Development Applications
1 26 (7.62%) Git
2 19 (5.57%) Jaeger
3 12 (3.52%) Jenkins
3 12 (3.52%) LabVIEW
4 8 (2.35%) GitLab
5 7 (2.05%) JIRA
6 4 (1.17%) Selenium
6 4 (1.17%) Toad
7 3 (0.88%) JMeter
7 3 (0.88%) Oracle APEX
7 3 (0.88%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (0.59%) CircleCI
8 2 (0.59%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.59%) Mocha
8 2 (0.59%) Postman
8 2 (0.59%) SoapUI
8 2 (0.59%) webpack
9 1 (0.29%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.29%) Browser DevTools
9 1 (0.29%) Xcode
General
1 73 (21.41%) Finance
2 66 (19.35%) Social Skills
3 35 (10.26%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (9.68%) Banking
5 30 (8.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 19 (5.57%) Public Sector
7 16 (4.69%) German Language
7 16 (4.69%) Presentation Skills
8 14 (4.11%) Electronics
8 14 (4.11%) Telecoms
9 11 (3.23%) Investment Banking
10 9 (2.64%) Law
10 9 (2.64%) Manufacturing
11 7 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.76%) Legal
13 5 (1.47%) Financial Institution
14 4 (1.17%) Back Office
14 4 (1.17%) Front Office
14 4 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
14 4 (1.17%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 65 (19.06%) Senior
2 29 (8.50%) Support Engineer
3 27 (7.92%) Lead
4 26 (7.62%) Applications Support
4 26 (7.62%) Linux Support
5 25 (7.33%) 3rd Line Support
6 23 (6.74%) Systems Support
7 22 (6.45%) Administrator
7 22 (6.45%) Linux Engineer
8 21 (6.16%) Analyst
8 21 (6.16%) Platform Engineer
9 20 (5.87%) Developer
10 19 (5.57%) Cloud Engineer
10 19 (5.57%) Infrastructure Support
11 18 (5.28%) Systems Administrator
11 18 (5.28%) Unix Support
12 15 (4.40%) Test Engineer
13 14 (4.11%) Verification Engineer
14 13 (3.81%) Support Analyst
15 12 (3.52%) Senior Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (10.85%) JSON
2 36 (10.56%) XML
3 33 (9.68%) HTML
4 29 (8.50%) Elastic Stack
4 29 (8.50%) Regular Expression
5 20 (5.87%) Django
5 20 (5.87%) LDAP
6 19 (5.57%) OpenTelemetry
7 16 (4.69%) WebSphere MQ
8 14 (4.11%) LAPP Stack
9 12 (3.52%) pytest
9 12 (3.52%) SOAP
10 10 (2.93%) Middleware
10 10 (2.93%) REST
11 8 (2.35%) FIX Protocol
11 8 (2.35%) Node.js
12 7 (2.05%) OAuth
12 7 (2.05%) RESTful
13 6 (1.76%) OAuth2
14 5 (1.47%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 67 (19.65%) Linux Command Line
2 34 (9.97%) Onboarding
3 26 (7.62%) Management Information System
4 15 (4.40%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (4.40%) e-Learning
5 11 (3.23%) Security Posture
6 10 (2.93%) IoT
6 10 (2.93%) Self-Motivation
7 9 (2.64%) Data Centre
8 8 (2.35%) Hedge funds
8 8 (2.35%) Self-Driving Car
9 7 (2.05%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (2.05%) Clustering
10 6 (1.76%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 6 (1.76%) Low-Code
11 5 (1.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 4 (1.17%) GNSS
12 4 (1.17%) NHS
12 4 (1.17%) Satnav
12 4 (1.17%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 223 (65.40%) Linux
2 105 (30.79%) Windows
3 39 (11.44%) Solaris
4 33 (9.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 25 (7.33%) HPUX
6 24 (7.04%) Windows Server 2003
7 22 (6.45%) Windows 7
7 22 (6.45%) Windows Server 2008
8 16 (4.69%) Windows Server
9 9 (2.64%) Mac OS
10 8 (2.35%) Debian
11 7 (2.05%) AIX
12 6 (1.76%) Ubuntu
13 3 (0.88%) CentOS
14 2 (0.59%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
15 1 (0.29%) Android
15 1 (0.29%) CoreOS
15 1 (0.29%) Oracle Linux
15 1 (0.29%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (23.17%) DevOps
2 74 (21.70%) Problem-Solving
3 69 (20.23%) Infrastructure as Code
4 55 (16.13%) AI
5 52 (15.25%) Agile
6 49 (14.37%) CI/CD
7 48 (14.08%) High Availability
8 47 (13.78%) ITIL
9 37 (10.85%) Incident Management
10 36 (10.56%) Computer Science
10 36 (10.56%) Containerisation
10 36 (10.56%) Data Analysis
11 34 (9.97%) Change Management
12 33 (9.68%) Test Automation
13 32 (9.38%) Mentoring
14 29 (8.50%) Analytics
14 29 (8.50%) LLM
15 28 (8.21%) Observability
15 28 (8.21%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 28 (8.21%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 200 (58.65%) Python
2 64 (18.77%) SQL
3 61 (17.89%) Bash
4 46 (13.49%) Java
4 46 (13.49%) JavaScript
5 42 (12.32%) PowerShell
6 27 (7.92%) Perl
7 24 (7.04%) Go
8 22 (6.45%) Shell Script
9 15 (4.40%) C#
10 13 (3.81%) MATLAB
11 10 (2.93%) C++
12 9 (2.64%) C
13 7 (2.05%) R
13 7 (2.05%) TypeScript
14 6 (1.76%) Korn
15 5 (1.47%) PL/SQL
15 5 (1.47%) VB
16 4 (1.17%) Fortran
17 3 (0.88%) Scala
Qualifications
1 108 (31.67%) Degree
2 99 (29.03%) Security Cleared
3 82 (24.05%) SC Cleared
4 47 (13.78%) AWS Certification
5 42 (12.32%) DV Cleared
6 30 (8.80%) Computer Science Degree
7 20 (5.87%) ITIL Certification
8 19 (5.57%) CCNA
8 19 (5.57%) Cisco Certification
9 15 (4.40%) CISSP
10 12 (3.52%) CCNP
10 12 (3.52%) HND
11 8 (2.35%) CCSK
12 7 (2.05%) Master's Degree
12 7 (2.05%) Network+ Certification
12 7 (2.05%) PhD
13 6 (1.76%) CISA
13 6 (1.76%) GCFA
13 6 (1.76%) GCIA
13 6 (1.76%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (14.37%) SLA
2 12 (3.52%) GDPR
2 12 (3.52%) QA
3 9 (2.64%) NIST
4 5 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (1.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (1.17%) COBIT
5 4 (1.17%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.59%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.29%) MiFID
7 1 (0.29%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 69 (20.23%) Docker
2 44 (12.90%) Active Directory
3 23 (6.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.47%) Veritas Cluster Server
5 3 (0.88%) Firmware
6 2 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.59%) XenApp
6 2 (0.59%) XenDesktop
7 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 69 (20.23%) Terraform
2 58 (17.01%) Ansible
3 49 (14.37%) Kubernetes
4 27 (7.92%) Prometheus
5 20 (5.87%) Argo
6 19 (5.57%) Kustomize
7 16 (4.69%) Grafana
8 12 (3.52%) AWS Copilot
9 6 (1.76%) Jamf Pro
10 4 (1.17%) Control-M
10 4 (1.17%) Puppet
10 4 (1.17%) SCCM
11 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
11 3 (0.88%) Netcool
11 3 (0.88%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 3 (0.88%) Podman
12 2 (0.59%) Packer
12 2 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
12 2 (0.59%) Suricata
13 1 (0.29%) Ambari
Vendors
1 67 (19.65%) Google
2 61 (17.89%) Oracle
3 49 (14.37%) VMware
4 44 (12.90%) Microsoft
5 35 (10.26%) Red Hat
6 34 (9.97%) IBM
7 23 (6.74%) Cisco
8 20 (5.87%) SAP
9 16 (4.69%) ServiceNow
10 12 (3.52%) Splunk
11 11 (3.23%) Dell
12 9 (2.64%) Informatica
12 9 (2.64%) Workday
13 8 (2.35%) Fortinet
13 8 (2.35%) IFS
13 8 (2.35%) Juniper
13 8 (2.35%) Palo Alto
14 7 (2.05%) Arista
14 7 (2.05%) HP
14 7 (2.05%) Symantec