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

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 334 241 214
Rank change year-on-year -93 -27 -18
Permanent jobs citing Unix 351 689 821
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.59% 1.25% 1.60%
As % of the Operating Systems category 7.05% 8.33% 9.78%
Number of salaries quoted 202 258 567
10th Percentile £41,250 £41,250 £43,000
25th Percentile £50,250 £50,000 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £61,250 £60,750 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +0.82% -10.00% +3.85%
75th Percentile £80,946 £80,000 £84,056
90th Percentile £90,000 £93,778 £96,839
UK excluding London median annual salary £56,430 £58,313 £61,750
% change year-on-year -3.23% -5.57% +23.50%

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 4,976 8,267 8,397
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 8.41% 14.97% 16.36%
Number of salaries quoted 3,698 4,738 6,889
10th Percentile £27,000 £28,250 £27,465
25th Percentile £31,250 £36,250 £34,581
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £44,000 £50,242 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.42% +0.48% -4.76%
75th Percentile £65,000 £72,438 £67,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £88,750 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £37,500 £47,000 £45,000
% change year-on-year -20.21% +4.44% -

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 1 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 1 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 -64 321 £59,000 -1.67% 91
UK excluding London -99 181 £56,430 -3.23% 50
London -24 155 £77,500 +11.82% 57
Work from Home -15 134 £72,500 +4.61% 50
South West +22 47 £55,000 -23.60% 4
South East +13 47 £58,000 +5.45% 21
East of England +10 38 £43,085 -25.07% 6
North of England -87 17 £55,000 +7.32% 10
Midlands -46 13 £73,801 +34.18% 8
Wales +5 9 £65,000 +34.57%
West Midlands -37 9 £74,401 +24.00% 5
Scotland -35 8 £73,801 +6.48% 6
Yorkshire -29 6 £25,750 -67.86% 4
North West -62 6 £66,901 +33.80% 7
North East +3 5 £73,801 +47.60%
East Midlands -19 4 £40,000 -27.27% 3
Northern Ireland -16 2 £73,801 -18.00%

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 40 (11.40%) Microsoft Exchange
2 26 (7.41%) Exchange Server 2003
3 22 (6.27%) WebSphere
4 21 (5.98%) Tomcat
5 16 (4.56%) WebSphere Application Server
6 9 (2.56%) Apache Spark
7 6 (1.71%) Apache
7 6 (1.71%) Confluence
7 6 (1.71%) nginx
8 5 (1.42%) Anypoint
8 5 (1.42%) IIS
8 5 (1.42%) WebLogic
9 4 (1.14%) Oracle Workflow
10 3 (0.85%) WebLogic Portal
11 2 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
12 1 (0.28%) JBoss
12 1 (0.28%) NetWeaver
12 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.28%) SharePoint
Applications
1 19 (5.41%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (4.84%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 7 (1.99%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.42%) Shopify
3 4 (1.14%) Fidessa
3 4 (1.14%) NEC Housing
3 4 (1.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.85%) Primavera
5 2 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.28%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 112 (31.91%) AWS
2 74 (21.08%) Azure
3 48 (13.68%) GCP
4 38 (10.83%) AWS CloudFormation
5 27 (7.69%) Pulumi
6 26 (7.41%) Amazon ECR
7 20 (5.70%) Amazon ECS
7 20 (5.70%) dbt
8 19 (5.41%) Serverless
9 18 (5.13%) PaaS
10 17 (4.84%) Amazon EC2
10 17 (4.84%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (4.27%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (4.27%) SaaS
11 15 (4.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 14 (3.99%) Amazon S3
12 14 (3.99%) GitHub
13 12 (3.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 12 (3.42%) Amazon EKS
13 12 (3.42%) Amazon ElastiCache
Communications & Networking
1 38 (10.83%) TCP/IP
2 27 (7.69%) DNS
2 27 (7.69%) SSL
3 26 (7.41%) DHCP
4 20 (5.70%) Firewall
5 10 (2.85%) Broadband
5 10 (2.85%) VPN
6 9 (2.56%) SAN
6 9 (2.56%) VLAN
6 9 (2.56%) WAN
7 8 (2.28%) HTTPS
8 7 (1.99%) MPLS
9 6 (1.71%) FIX Connectivity
9 6 (1.71%) HTTP
9 6 (1.71%) Network Security
9 6 (1.71%) Reverse Proxy
9 6 (1.71%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (1.71%) Wireshark
10 5 (1.42%) 5G
10 5 (1.42%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (13.11%) PostgreSQL
2 37 (10.54%) Oracle Database
3 29 (8.26%) Amazon RDS
4 27 (7.69%) Oracle Database 10g
5 26 (7.41%) Relational Database
6 21 (5.98%) Elasticsearch
6 21 (5.98%) SQL Server
7 20 (5.70%) Redis
8 18 (5.13%) DB2
9 15 (4.27%) NoSQL
10 11 (3.13%) Big Data
11 8 (2.28%) Hadoop
11 8 (2.28%) Power BI
11 8 (2.28%) Tableau
12 7 (1.99%) MySQL
12 7 (1.99%) Oracle Reports
12 7 (1.99%) RDBMS
13 6 (1.71%) FileMaker
14 5 (1.42%) Apache Hive
15 4 (1.14%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 23 (6.55%) Git
2 10 (2.85%) Jenkins
2 10 (2.85%) JIRA
3 9 (2.56%) LabVIEW
4 8 (2.28%) GitLab
5 7 (1.99%) Jaeger
6 4 (1.14%) Cypress.io
6 4 (1.14%) Toad
7 3 (0.85%) CircleCI
7 3 (0.85%) Mocha
7 3 (0.85%) Oracle APEX
7 3 (0.85%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.85%) webpack
8 2 (0.57%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.57%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.57%) JUnit
9 1 (0.28%) Eclipse
9 1 (0.28%) JMeter
9 1 (0.28%) Maven
9 1 (0.28%) Xcode
General
1 92 (26.21%) Finance
2 68 (19.37%) Social Skills
3 35 (9.97%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (9.69%) Banking
5 19 (5.41%) Public Sector
6 16 (4.56%) German Language
6 16 (4.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (3.99%) Telecoms
8 13 (3.70%) Investment Banking
8 13 (3.70%) Presentation Skills
9 11 (3.13%) Electronics
10 10 (2.85%) Law
11 8 (2.28%) Manufacturing
12 7 (1.99%) Documentation Skills
13 5 (1.42%) Front Office
13 5 (1.42%) Legal
14 4 (1.14%) Advertising
14 4 (1.14%) Back Office
14 4 (1.14%) Financial Institution
14 4 (1.14%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 65 (18.52%) Senior
2 35 (9.97%) Administrator
3 31 (8.83%) Support Engineer
4 30 (8.55%) Applications Support
4 30 (8.55%) Linux Support
5 29 (8.26%) Systems Administrator
6 25 (7.12%) 3rd Line Support
7 24 (6.84%) Linux Engineer
8 23 (6.55%) Systems Support
9 22 (6.27%) Infrastructure Support
9 22 (6.27%) Platform Engineer
10 21 (5.98%) Analyst
10 21 (5.98%) Developer
11 19 (5.41%) Unix Support
12 15 (4.27%) Support Analyst
13 13 (3.70%) Linux Support Engineer
13 13 (3.70%) Senior Platform Engineer
14 12 (3.42%) Lead
15 11 (3.13%) Cloud Engineer
15 11 (3.13%) Verification Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (10.54%) JSON
2 35 (9.97%) XML
3 34 (9.69%) HTML
4 30 (8.55%) Regular Expression
5 23 (6.55%) LDAP
6 20 (5.70%) Django
7 18 (5.13%) WebSphere MQ
8 16 (4.56%) Elastic Stack
8 16 (4.56%) LAPP Stack
9 12 (3.42%) OAuth
10 11 (3.13%) FIX Protocol
11 10 (2.85%) Middleware
11 10 (2.85%) REST
12 9 (2.56%) pytest
12 9 (2.56%) SOAP
13 7 (1.99%) Node.js
13 7 (1.99%) OpenTelemetry
13 7 (1.99%) RESTful
14 6 (1.71%) OAuth2
14 6 (1.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 69 (19.66%) Linux Command Line
2 37 (10.54%) Onboarding
3 25 (7.12%) e-Learning
4 23 (6.55%) Management Information System
5 15 (4.27%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (2.85%) PKI
6 10 (2.85%) Security Posture
7 9 (2.56%) IoT
8 8 (2.28%) Clustering
8 8 (2.28%) Data Centre
9 7 (1.99%) Replication
9 7 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
10 6 (1.71%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 6 (1.71%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 6 (1.71%) Hedge funds
10 6 (1.71%) Low-Code
11 5 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.42%) Self-Driving Car
12 4 (1.14%) GNSS
12 4 (1.14%) Satnav
Operating Systems
1 238 (67.81%) Linux
2 112 (31.91%) Windows
3 48 (13.68%) Solaris
4 37 (10.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 26 (7.41%) HPUX
5 26 (7.41%) Windows Server 2003
6 22 (6.27%) Windows 7
6 22 (6.27%) Windows Server 2008
7 17 (4.84%) Windows Server
8 10 (2.85%) Debian
9 8 (2.28%) Mac OS
10 6 (1.71%) AIX
10 6 (1.71%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.85%) Windows Server 2016
11 3 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.57%) CentOS
13 1 (0.28%) Android
13 1 (0.28%) CoreOS
13 1 (0.28%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 72 (20.51%) Problem-Solving
2 70 (19.94%) DevOps
3 57 (16.24%) Infrastructure as Code
3 57 (16.24%) ITIL
4 51 (14.53%) AI
5 49 (13.96%) High Availability
6 47 (13.39%) CI/CD
7 43 (12.25%) Agile
8 41 (11.68%) Data Analysis
9 38 (10.83%) Incident Management
10 35 (9.97%) Change Management
11 32 (9.12%) Computer Science
12 30 (8.55%) LLM
13 27 (7.69%) Analytics
13 27 (7.69%) Observability
14 26 (7.41%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 25 (7.12%) Containerisation
15 25 (7.12%) Open Source
15 25 (7.12%) Test Automation
16 24 (6.84%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 201 (57.26%) Python
2 65 (18.52%) SQL
3 54 (15.38%) Bash
4 44 (12.54%) PowerShell
5 34 (9.69%) JavaScript
6 30 (8.55%) Java
7 28 (7.98%) Perl
8 23 (6.55%) Shell Script
9 14 (3.99%) C#
10 12 (3.42%) Go
10 12 (3.42%) R
11 11 (3.13%) MATLAB
12 10 (2.85%) C
13 9 (2.56%) C++
14 8 (2.28%) Korn
15 5 (1.42%) PL/SQL
16 4 (1.14%) Fortran
16 4 (1.14%) TypeScript
16 4 (1.14%) VB
17 3 (0.85%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 110 (31.34%) Degree
1 110 (31.34%) Security Cleared
2 94 (26.78%) SC Cleared
3 60 (17.09%) DV Cleared
4 36 (10.26%) AWS Certification
5 31 (8.83%) CCNA
5 31 (8.83%) Cisco Certification
6 25 (7.12%) Computer Science Degree
7 24 (6.84%) CCNP
8 23 (6.55%) ITIL Certification
9 20 (5.70%) CISSP
10 9 (2.56%) HND
11 8 (2.28%) CISA
11 8 (2.28%) Master's Degree
11 8 (2.28%) PhD
12 7 (1.99%) ACCA
12 7 (1.99%) CIMA
12 7 (1.99%) Network+ Certification
13 6 (1.71%) GCIA
13 6 (1.71%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (15.67%) SLA
2 12 (3.42%) GDPR
3 10 (2.85%) QA
4 8 (2.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (2.28%) NIST
5 6 (1.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.85%) COBIT
7 2 (0.57%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.28%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 52 (14.81%) Docker
2 49 (13.96%) Active Directory
3 27 (7.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.42%) Veritas Cluster Server
5 4 (1.14%) Firmware
5 4 (1.14%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (1.14%) XenApp
5 4 (1.14%) XenDesktop
6 2 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.28%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 57 (16.24%) Terraform
2 52 (14.81%) Ansible
3 37 (10.54%) Kubernetes
4 19 (5.41%) Grafana
5 15 (4.27%) Prometheus
6 12 (3.42%) AWS Copilot
7 8 (2.28%) Argo
8 7 (1.99%) Kustomize
9 6 (1.71%) Jamf Pro
10 5 (1.42%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (1.42%) SCCM
11 4 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.85%) Netcool
12 3 (0.85%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 3 (0.85%) Podman
12 3 (0.85%) Puppet
13 2 (0.57%) Control-M
13 2 (0.57%) Suricata
14 1 (0.28%) Ambari
14 1 (0.28%) VxRail
Vendors
1 64 (18.23%) Oracle
2 56 (15.95%) VMware
3 52 (14.81%) Google
3 52 (14.81%) Microsoft
4 47 (13.39%) Red Hat
5 36 (10.26%) Cisco
5 36 (10.26%) IBM
6 20 (5.70%) SAP
7 16 (4.56%) ServiceNow
8 12 (3.42%) Dell
8 12 (3.42%) Splunk
9 9 (2.56%) Workday
10 8 (2.28%) Fortinet
10 8 (2.28%) HP
10 8 (2.28%) IFS
10 8 (2.28%) Juniper
10 8 (2.28%) NetApp
10 8 (2.28%) Palo Alto
11 7 (1.99%) Atlassian
11 7 (1.99%) Symantec