Linux Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Linux
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Linux skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 40 51
Rank change year-on-year -23 +11 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 274 235 149
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 3.57% 5.73% 3.62%
As % of the Operating Systems category 31.17% 36.60% 28.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 165 88
10th Percentile £358 £318 £360
25th Percentile £416 £368 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £476 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.04% -13.45% +4.76%
75th Percentile £615 £609 £620
90th Percentile £650 £688 £691
England median daily rate £525 £523 £550
% change year-on-year +0.48% -5.00% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 4
10th Percentile £18.90 £44.75 -
25th Percentile £23.36 £48.96 £47.00
Median hourly rate £36.48 £55.97 £50.75
Median % change year-on-year -34.82% +10.29% +63.45%
75th Percentile £47.53 £62.99 £62.33
90th Percentile £48.26 £67.19 £73.29
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

All Operating Systems
North of England

Linux 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 in the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 879 642 517
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.45% 15.67% 12.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 583 446 293
10th Percentile £185 £166 £178
25th Percentile £278 £250 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £435 £400 £445
Median % change year-on-year +8.75% -10.11% +1.71%
75th Percentile £528 £520 £569
90th Percentile £615 £617 £646
England median daily rate £472 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.89% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 27 37
10th Percentile £13.84 £13.00 £15.22
25th Percentile £16.90 £15.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.00 £18.50 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% +5.71% -18.24%
75th Percentile £42.34 £19.76 £23.14
90th Percentile £95.00 £31.87 £39.90
England median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -58.08% +30.78%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Linux relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Linux job vacancy trend in the North of England

Linux
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Linux.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Linux

Linux
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux in the North of England over the 6 months to 7 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Linux in the North of England

Linux
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Linux.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Linux

Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Linux in the North of England over the 6 months to 7 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Linux in the North of England

Linux
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux within the North of England region over the 6 months to 7 October 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
North West -12 137 £493 +22.94% 130
Yorkshire -32 112 £521 +4.25% 64
North East -13 33 £475 -11.63% 37
Linux
England

Linux
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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 13 (4.74%) Confluence
2 4 (1.46%) Apache
2 4 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.09%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.09%) IBM Transformation Extender
3 3 (1.09%) nginx
3 3 (1.09%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.09%) WebSphere
4 2 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.73%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.73%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.73%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.36%) CMS
5 1 (0.36%) SAS
5 1 (0.36%) Traefik
Applications
1 6 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 101 (36.86%) AWS
2 79 (28.83%) Azure
3 52 (18.98%) GCP
4 26 (9.49%) GitHub
5 19 (6.93%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (6.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 17 (6.20%) OCI
8 16 (5.84%) OpenShift
9 15 (5.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 13 (4.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (4.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (4.38%) Amazon ECS
11 12 (4.38%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (4.38%) Serverless
12 11 (4.01%) Entra ID
13 9 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (3.28%) Azure Monitor
13 9 (3.28%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (2.92%) AWS KMS
15 7 (2.55%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 31 (11.31%) Firewall
2 20 (7.30%) DNS
3 19 (6.93%) Network Security
4 11 (4.01%) TCP/IP
5 10 (3.65%) SAN
6 8 (2.92%) SD-WAN
6 8 (2.92%) WAN
7 7 (2.55%) Wireless
8 6 (2.19%) 3GPP
8 6 (2.19%) DHCP
8 6 (2.19%) RTP
8 6 (2.19%) VPN
8 6 (2.19%) Wireshark
9 3 (1.09%) Fibre Channel
9 3 (1.09%) FTP
9 3 (1.09%) HTTP
9 3 (1.09%) iSCSI
9 3 (1.09%) NAS
9 3 (1.09%) SSL
9 3 (1.09%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (8.39%) Oracle Database
2 17 (6.20%) RDBMS
2 17 (6.20%) Relational Database
3 14 (5.11%) Oracle Exadata
4 11 (4.01%) NoSQL
4 11 (4.01%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.65%) MongoDB
6 6 (2.19%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (1.82%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.46%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.46%) Power BI
8 4 (1.46%) Sybase ASE
9 3 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.09%) Big Data
9 3 (1.09%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.73%) Amazon QuickSight
10 2 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.73%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 44 (16.06%) Git
2 27 (9.85%) GitLab
3 21 (7.66%) JIRA
4 20 (7.30%) Jenkins
5 7 (2.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (2.19%) Mockito
6 6 (2.19%) TeamCity
7 5 (1.82%) Cucumber
7 5 (1.82%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.73%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.73%) Burp Suite
8 2 (0.73%) Gatling
8 2 (0.73%) Gradle
8 2 (0.73%) LoadRunner
8 2 (0.73%) Maven
8 2 (0.73%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.73%) Toad
9 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.36%) IntelliJ
9 1 (0.36%) Jaeger
General
1 65 (23.72%) Social Skills
2 60 (21.90%) Finance
3 30 (10.95%) Banking
4 25 (9.12%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (8.76%) Public Sector
6 8 (2.92%) Legal
7 7 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.55%) Military
8 5 (1.82%) Aviation
8 5 (1.82%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.82%) Police
9 4 (1.46%) Corporate Banking
9 4 (1.46%) Law
10 3 (1.09%) Investment Banking
10 3 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.09%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.36%) Electronics
11 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 41 (14.96%) Senior
2 30 (10.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 27 (9.85%) Developer
3 27 (9.85%) Linux Engineer
4 22 (8.03%) DevOps Engineer
4 22 (8.03%) Security Engineer
5 20 (7.30%) Cloud Engineer
6 16 (5.84%) Unix Engineer
7 14 (5.11%) Consultant
8 13 (4.74%) Lead
9 12 (4.38%) AWS Engineer
10 11 (4.01%) Cloud Security Engineer
10 11 (4.01%) DBA
11 10 (3.65%) Java Developer
11 10 (3.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Software Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Support Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Unix Linux Engineer
12 9 (3.28%) Senior Developer
13 8 (2.92%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (36.50%) Terraform
2 16 (5.84%) REST
3 15 (5.47%) Kafka
4 14 (5.11%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 13 (4.74%) .NET
6 11 (4.01%) JSON
7 9 (3.28%) Django
7 9 (3.28%) Middleware
8 8 (2.92%) ARM Templates
8 8 (2.92%) YAML
9 6 (2.19%) .NET Core
9 6 (2.19%) ActiveMQ
9 6 (2.19%) JAX-RS
9 6 (2.19%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (1.82%) Flask
10 5 (1.82%) Node.js
10 5 (1.82%) Redfish
10 5 (1.82%) RESTful
11 4 (1.46%) Azure Blueprints
11 4 (1.46%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (13.50%) Cloud Native
2 24 (8.76%) Data Centre
3 22 (8.03%) Linux Command Line
4 20 (7.30%) PKI
4 20 (7.30%) Security Posture
5 18 (6.57%) Public Cloud
6 16 (5.84%) Replication
7 14 (5.11%) Management Information System
8 13 (4.74%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (4.74%) Onboarding
9 12 (4.38%) Hybrid Cloud
9 12 (4.38%) Legacy Systems
10 11 (4.01%) Mainframe
11 10 (3.65%) Distributed Systems
12 9 (3.28%) Enterprise Cloud
13 7 (2.55%) Operational Technology
14 6 (2.19%) Cloud Security Posture
14 6 (2.19%) SCADA
15 5 (1.82%) Product Ownership
15 5 (1.82%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 86 (31.39%) Windows
2 70 (25.55%) Unix
3 61 (22.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 26 (9.49%) Windows Server
5 25 (9.12%) AIX
6 19 (6.93%) Solaris
7 8 (2.92%) CentOS
8 6 (2.19%) Ubuntu
8 6 (2.19%) VMS
9 5 (1.82%) HPUX
9 5 (1.82%) Oracle Linux
9 5 (1.82%) SUSE
10 4 (1.46%) zOS
11 3 (1.09%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.73%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.73%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.73%) OpenVMS
12 2 (0.73%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.36%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (39.05%) CI/CD
2 96 (35.04%) Infrastructure as Code
3 79 (28.83%) DevOps
4 65 (23.72%) Agile
5 54 (19.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 53 (19.34%) Observability
7 48 (17.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 47 (17.15%) Migration
9 45 (16.42%) Change Management
10 39 (14.23%) Cloud Security
10 39 (14.23%) Infrastructure Automation
11 37 (13.50%) High Availability
12 35 (12.77%) Stakeholder Management
13 34 (12.41%) Problem-Solving
14 33 (12.04%) Disaster Recovery
15 31 (11.31%) ITIL
16 30 (10.95%) Cybersecurity
17 29 (10.58%) Containerisation
18 28 (10.22%) Performance Tuning
18 28 (10.22%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 111 (40.51%) Python
2 74 (27.01%) Bash
3 69 (25.18%) PowerShell
4 45 (16.42%) Java
5 40 (14.60%) SQL
6 17 (6.20%) Shell Script
7 15 (5.47%) Bicep
8 12 (4.38%) C#
9 11 (4.01%) Go
9 11 (4.01%) JavaScript
10 7 (2.55%) Search Processing Language
11 4 (1.46%) Groovy
11 4 (1.46%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.46%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (1.09%) JCL
12 3 (1.09%) Rust
12 3 (1.09%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.73%) DCL
13 2 (0.73%) Perl
13 2 (0.73%) REXX
Qualifications
1 56 (20.44%) Security Cleared
2 45 (16.42%) SC Cleared
3 35 (12.77%) Degree
4 28 (10.22%) CISSP
5 22 (8.03%) AWS Certification
6 21 (7.66%) Azure Certification
7 7 (2.55%) CompTIA Security+
8 6 (2.19%) CISM
8 6 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (2.19%) RHCE
9 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.46%) CEH
10 4 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (1.09%) DV Cleared
11 3 (1.09%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
11 3 (1.09%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.19%) GRC
1 6 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (1.46%) HIPAA
2 4 (1.46%) NIST
3 3 (1.09%) SLA
4 2 (0.73%) Data Quality
4 2 (0.73%) PCI DSS
4 2 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.36%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.36%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.36%) GDPR
5 1 (0.36%) NCSC
5 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 51 (18.61%) Docker
2 37 (13.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (9.49%) Virtual Machines
4 21 (7.66%) Active Directory
5 18 (6.57%) Oracle RAC
6 14 (5.11%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (4.74%) KVM
8 11 (4.01%) vSphere
9 10 (3.65%) NFS
10 8 (2.92%) Firmware
10 8 (2.92%) Hyper-V
11 6 (2.19%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (1.46%) Ceph
13 3 (1.09%) GPFS
13 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 3 (1.09%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (1.09%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.36%) HDFS
14 1 (0.36%) NetIQ eDirectory
14 1 (0.36%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 77 (28.10%) Kubernetes
2 74 (27.01%) Ansible
3 22 (8.03%) Prometheus
4 21 (7.66%) Grafana
5 20 (7.30%) Progress Chef
6 19 (6.93%) Data Guard
7 18 (6.57%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.92%) Istio
8 8 (2.92%) VxRail
9 7 (2.55%) Tivoli
10 6 (2.19%) Packer
10 6 (2.19%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 6 (2.19%) vCenter Server
11 5 (1.82%) Dell DRAC
12 4 (1.46%) Argo
12 4 (1.46%) McAfee ePO
12 4 (1.46%) Nessus
12 4 (1.46%) Oracle ZFS
12 4 (1.46%) ZABBIX
13 3 (1.09%) Nagios
Vendors
1 46 (16.79%) Oracle
2 43 (15.69%) Microsoft
3 41 (14.96%) Red Hat
4 40 (14.60%) VMware
5 24 (8.76%) Google
6 23 (8.39%) Splunk
7 17 (6.20%) Cisco
7 17 (6.20%) IBM
8 13 (4.74%) Dell
9 10 (3.65%) ServiceNow
10 8 (2.92%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.55%) Fortinet
12 6 (2.19%) Tenable
13 5 (1.82%) AppDynamics
13 5 (1.82%) Databricks
13 5 (1.82%) HP
13 5 (1.82%) Juniper
14 4 (1.46%) Carbon Black
14 4 (1.46%) McAfee
14 4 (1.46%) Sybase