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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 47 31 31
Rank change year-on-year -16 0 +10
Contract jobs citing Linux 308 232 182
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.18% 5.86% 4.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 37.65% 38.73% 32.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 158 123
10th Percentile £358 £329 £375
25th Percentile £408 £369 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £619 £595 £619
90th Percentile £653 £658 £673
England median daily rate £525 £526 £550
% change year-on-year -0.24% -4.32% -5.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 4
10th Percentile £18.90 - £47.53
25th Percentile £23.36 - £48.31
Median hourly rate £36.67 £70.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year -47.61% +24.44% +112.26%
75th Percentile £49.06 - £68.90
90th Percentile £49.63 - £75.91
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +3.85%

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 818 599 559
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.11% 15.13% 13.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 535 395 365
10th Percentile £165 £181 £183
25th Percentile £233 £268 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £435 £400 £450
Median % change year-on-year +8.75% -11.11% -
75th Percentile £538 £538 £588
90th Percentile £630 £614 £750
England median daily rate £469 £460 £488
% change year-on-year +1.96% -5.64% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 20 60
10th Percentile £16.21 £13.00 -
25th Percentile £17.07 £13.90 £10.95
Median hourly rate £19.84 £17.72 £15.46
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% +14.62% -30.38%
75th Percentile £27.33 £18.87 £19.39
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.75 £24.64
England median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £31.00
% change year-on-year +41.30% -25.81% -25.38%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -8 159 £500 +25.00% 93
Yorkshire -24 130 £500 -4.76% 30
North East -20 26 £480 -16.52% 30
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 21 (6.82%) Confluence
2 5 (1.62%) CICS
3 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.65%) Apache
4 2 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.65%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.65%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.65%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.32%) CMS
5 1 (0.32%) nginx
5 1 (0.32%) SAS
5 1 (0.32%) WebSphere
Applications
1 7 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.32%) Odoo
2 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 107 (34.74%) AWS
2 80 (25.97%) Azure
3 49 (15.91%) GCP
4 31 (10.06%) OpenShift
5 25 (8.12%) GitHub
6 18 (5.84%) OCI
7 17 (5.52%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 17 (5.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 14 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
9 11 (3.57%) Amazon EKS
10 10 (3.25%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (3.25%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (3.25%) GitHub Actions
11 9 (2.92%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (2.92%) Serverless
12 8 (2.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (1.95%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.95%) Azure AKS
13 6 (1.95%) Azure Sentinel
14 5 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 37 (12.01%) Firewall
2 21 (6.82%) SAN
3 17 (5.52%) DNS
4 15 (4.87%) Network Security
5 13 (4.22%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.92%) VSAN
7 7 (2.27%) SSL
8 6 (1.95%) 3GPP
8 6 (1.95%) RTP
8 6 (1.95%) Wireshark
9 5 (1.62%) NAS
9 5 (1.62%) VPN
10 4 (1.30%) iSCSI
11 3 (0.97%) FTP
11 3 (0.97%) HTTP
11 3 (0.97%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.97%) WAN
11 3 (0.97%) Wireless
12 2 (0.65%) BIG-IP
12 2 (0.65%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.09%) Oracle Database
2 20 (6.49%) MongoDB
3 18 (5.84%) RDBMS
3 18 (5.84%) Relational Database
4 15 (4.87%) Oracle Exadata
5 14 (4.55%) NoSQL
6 11 (3.57%) SQL Server
7 10 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (2.27%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (1.95%) Oracle Database 12c
10 5 (1.62%) DataStage
10 5 (1.62%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.62%) Sybase ASE
11 3 (0.97%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (0.97%) BusinessObjects
11 3 (0.97%) Db2
12 2 (0.65%) Big Data
12 2 (0.65%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.65%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 31 (10.06%) JIRA
2 30 (9.74%) Git
3 28 (9.09%) GitLab
4 24 (7.79%) Jenkins
5 16 (5.19%) Mockito
6 6 (1.95%) TeamCity
7 5 (1.62%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (1.30%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.97%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.65%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.65%) Gatling
10 2 (0.65%) Gradle
10 2 (0.65%) Liquibase
10 2 (0.65%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.65%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.65%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.65%) Toad
11 1 (0.32%) Hudson
11 1 (0.32%) Jaeger
General
1 65 (21.10%) Finance
2 64 (20.78%) Social Skills
3 32 (10.39%) Banking
3 32 (10.39%) Public Sector
4 21 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (2.60%) Legal
6 6 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (1.62%) Aviation
7 5 (1.62%) Fire and Rescue
7 5 (1.62%) Influencing Skills
7 5 (1.62%) Military
7 5 (1.62%) Police
8 4 (1.30%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.30%) Telecoms
9 3 (0.97%) Law
9 3 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.65%) Corporate Banking
10 2 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 50 (16.23%) Senior
2 35 (11.36%) Developer
3 33 (10.71%) Linux Engineer
4 30 (9.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 27 (8.77%) Security Engineer
6 23 (7.47%) DevOps Engineer
6 23 (7.47%) Java Developer
7 18 (5.84%) Cloud Engineer
8 17 (5.52%) Consultant
9 16 (5.19%) DBA
9 16 (5.19%) Unix Engineer
10 15 (4.87%) Software Engineer
11 14 (4.55%) Senior Developer
12 13 (4.22%) Senior Java Developer
13 11 (3.57%) Data Centre Engineer
13 11 (3.57%) Lead
13 11 (3.57%) Security Consultant
14 10 (3.25%) Analyst
14 10 (3.25%) Unix Linux Engineer
15 9 (2.92%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (6.17%) Kafka
2 16 (5.19%) JAX-RS
3 15 (4.87%) ActiveMQ
3 15 (4.87%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 12 (3.90%) .NET
4 12 (3.90%) REST
5 11 (3.57%) Middleware
6 10 (3.25%) LDAP
6 10 (3.25%) Redfish
7 8 (2.60%) YAML
8 7 (2.27%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (1.95%) .NET Core
9 6 (1.95%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (1.62%) ARM Templates
10 5 (1.62%) JSON
10 5 (1.62%) XML
11 4 (1.30%) Flash
11 4 (1.30%) Node.js
11 4 (1.30%) OpenID
11 4 (1.30%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 35 (11.36%) Cloud Native
2 31 (10.06%) Data Centre
3 29 (9.42%) Linux Command Line
4 27 (8.77%) Security Posture
5 19 (6.17%) Replication
6 15 (4.87%) Public Cloud
7 14 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (4.22%) Mainframe
8 13 (4.22%) Management Information System
8 13 (4.22%) PKI
9 12 (3.90%) Cloud Security Posture
9 12 (3.90%) Data Protection Act
9 12 (3.90%) Hybrid Cloud
10 9 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
11 7 (2.27%) Enterprise Cloud
12 6 (1.95%) Enterprise Storage
13 5 (1.62%) BYOD
13 5 (1.62%) Robotics
13 5 (1.62%) VSAM
14 4 (1.30%) EMC VMAX
Operating Systems
1 98 (31.82%) Windows
2 86 (27.92%) Unix
3 70 (22.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 34 (11.04%) AIX
5 24 (7.79%) Solaris
6 22 (7.14%) Windows Server
7 12 (3.90%) Mac OS X
8 9 (2.92%) Ubuntu
8 9 (2.92%) VMS
9 8 (2.60%) Oracle Linux
10 6 (1.95%) CentOS
11 5 (1.62%) CoreOS
11 5 (1.62%) HPUX
11 5 (1.62%) SUSE
11 5 (1.62%) zOS
12 3 (0.97%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.97%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.65%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.65%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (31.17%) CI/CD
2 80 (25.97%) DevOps
3 75 (24.35%) Infrastructure as Code
4 73 (23.70%) Agile
5 51 (16.56%) Migration
6 46 (14.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 45 (14.61%) Continuous Improvement
8 42 (13.64%) Test Automation
9 41 (13.31%) Observability
10 39 (12.66%) Cloud Security
11 37 (12.01%) Change Management
12 36 (11.69%) High Availability
12 36 (11.69%) Infrastructure Automation
12 36 (11.69%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (11.04%) Performance Tuning
13 34 (11.04%) Roadmaps
14 33 (10.71%) ITIL
15 29 (9.42%) BDD
15 29 (9.42%) Microservices
15 29 (9.42%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 114 (37.01%) Python
2 77 (25.00%) Bash
3 67 (21.75%) PowerShell
4 53 (17.21%) Java
5 47 (15.26%) SQL
6 16 (5.19%) Shell Script
7 14 (4.55%) JavaScript
8 13 (4.22%) Bicep
9 12 (3.90%) C#
10 7 (2.27%) Go
11 6 (1.95%) Rust
11 6 (1.95%) TypeScript
12 5 (1.62%) COBOL
12 5 (1.62%) JCL
13 4 (1.30%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.65%) C++
14 2 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.65%) Perl
14 2 (0.65%) REXX
14 2 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 57 (18.51%) Security Cleared
2 44 (14.29%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.71%) CISSP
3 33 (10.71%) Degree
4 20 (6.49%) AWS Certification
5 17 (5.52%) Azure Certification
6 13 (4.22%) CompTIA Security+
7 9 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (1.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (1.95%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.95%) MCSE
9 6 (1.95%) RHCE
10 5 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (1.62%) MCSA
11 4 (1.30%) CISM
11 4 (1.30%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 4 (1.30%) OCP
11 4 (1.30%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.92%) HIPAA
2 6 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (1.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 5 (1.62%) GDPR
3 5 (1.62%) NIST
4 4 (1.30%) GRC
5 3 (0.97%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.97%) QA
5 3 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.65%) SLA
7 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.32%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.32%) GxP
7 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 58 (18.83%) Docker
2 42 (13.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 37 (12.01%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (5.84%) Active Directory
4 18 (5.84%) Oracle RAC
5 17 (5.52%) KVM
6 16 (5.19%) NFS
6 16 (5.19%) vSphere
7 12 (3.90%) Firmware
7 12 (3.90%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (3.57%) Hyper-V
9 8 (2.60%) VMware NSX
10 5 (1.62%) Time Sharing Option
11 4 (1.30%) GPFS
12 3 (0.97%) Ceph
12 3 (0.97%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 2 (0.65%) SRDF
14 1 (0.32%) NetIQ eDirectory
14 1 (0.32%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.32%) zsh
Systems Management
1 99 (32.14%) Terraform
2 88 (28.57%) Ansible
3 78 (25.32%) Kubernetes
4 23 (7.47%) Oracle RMAN
5 21 (6.82%) Progress Chef
6 19 (6.17%) Data Guard
6 19 (6.17%) Grafana
6 19 (6.17%) Prometheus
7 10 (3.25%) Dell DRAC
8 9 (2.92%) Packer
9 8 (2.60%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 8 (2.60%) vCenter Server
10 7 (2.27%) PowerCLI
10 7 (2.27%) vRealize
11 6 (1.95%) Nessus
12 5 (1.62%) Argo
12 5 (1.62%) CASB
12 5 (1.62%) Istio
12 5 (1.62%) Puppet
13 4 (1.30%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 49 (15.91%) Oracle
2 47 (15.26%) VMware
3 43 (13.96%) Red Hat
4 35 (11.36%) Microsoft
5 25 (8.12%) IBM
6 24 (7.79%) Google
7 16 (5.19%) Cisco
8 15 (4.87%) Splunk
9 13 (4.22%) ServiceNow
10 10 (3.25%) CyberArk
11 9 (2.92%) Broadcom
11 9 (2.92%) Dell
11 9 (2.92%) HP
12 8 (2.60%) Dynatrace
13 7 (2.27%) Tenable
14 6 (1.95%) Remedy
15 5 (1.62%) Brocade
15 5 (1.62%) Sybase
15 5 (1.62%) Varonis
16 4 (1.30%) SAP