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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 31 35
Rank change year-on-year -13 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Linux 306 233 180
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.16% 5.84% 4.39%
As % of the Operating Systems category 37.32% 38.70% 32.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 160 121
10th Percentile £358 £320 £375
25th Percentile £408 £367 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £617 £590 £619
90th Percentile £650 £653 £675
England median daily rate £525 £525 £548
% change year-on-year - -4.11% -4.78%
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 820 602 549
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.14% 15.08% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 539 399 357
10th Percentile £171 £180 £187
25th Percentile £233 £268 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £430 £400 £463
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -13.51% +5.11%
75th Percentile £537 £538 £588
90th Percentile £625 £613 £765
England median daily rate £470 £454 £490
% change year-on-year +3.47% -7.20% -2.10%
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% -29.73%
75th Percentile £27.33 £18.87 £19.39
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.75 £24.64
England median hourly rate £33.32 £23.00 £34.50
% change year-on-year +44.85% -33.33% -16.96%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -9 159 £500 +25.00% 93
Yorkshire -26 128 £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 20 (6.54%) Confluence
2 4 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.98%) Apache
3 3 (0.98%) CICS
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 (0.33%) CMS
5 1 (0.33%) nginx
5 1 (0.33%) SAS
5 1 (0.33%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.33%) WebSphere
Applications
1 7 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.33%) Odoo
2 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 106 (34.64%) AWS
2 82 (26.80%) Azure
3 48 (15.69%) GCP
4 31 (10.13%) OpenShift
5 25 (8.17%) GitHub
6 18 (5.88%) OCI
7 17 (5.56%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 17 (5.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 16 (5.23%) Azure DevOps
9 11 (3.59%) Amazon EKS
10 10 (3.27%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (3.27%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (3.27%) GitHub Actions
10 10 (3.27%) Serverless
11 9 (2.94%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (2.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.96%) Azure Sentinel
13 6 (1.96%) Entra ID
13 6 (1.96%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 34 (11.11%) Firewall
2 22 (7.19%) SAN
3 19 (6.21%) DNS
4 15 (4.90%) Network Security
5 13 (4.25%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.94%) VSAN
7 7 (2.29%) SSL
8 6 (1.96%) 3GPP
8 6 (1.96%) RTP
8 6 (1.96%) VPN
8 6 (1.96%) Wireshark
9 5 (1.63%) NAS
10 4 (1.31%) iSCSI
11 3 (0.98%) DHCP
11 3 (0.98%) FTP
11 3 (0.98%) HTTP
11 3 (0.98%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.98%) WAN
11 3 (0.98%) Wireless
12 2 (0.65%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.15%) Oracle Database
2 20 (6.54%) MongoDB
3 18 (5.88%) RDBMS
3 18 (5.88%) Relational Database
4 15 (4.90%) Oracle Exadata
5 14 (4.58%) NoSQL
6 11 (3.59%) SQL Server
7 9 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
8 8 (2.61%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (1.96%) Oracle Database 12c
10 5 (1.63%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.63%) Sybase ASE
11 3 (0.98%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (0.98%) BusinessObjects
11 3 (0.98%) DataStage
11 3 (0.98%) Db2
12 2 (0.65%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.65%) Data Warehouse
12 2 (0.65%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 30 (9.80%) Git
1 30 (9.80%) JIRA
2 27 (8.82%) GitLab
3 22 (7.19%) Jenkins
4 16 (5.23%) Mockito
5 6 (1.96%) TeamCity
6 5 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (1.31%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.98%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.65%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.65%) Gatling
9 2 (0.65%) Gradle
9 2 (0.65%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.65%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.65%) Toad
10 1 (0.33%) Hudson
10 1 (0.33%) Jaeger
10 1 (0.33%) Liquibase
General
1 62 (20.26%) Finance
1 62 (20.26%) Social Skills
2 32 (10.46%) Public Sector
3 31 (10.13%) Banking
4 21 (6.86%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (3.27%) Legal
6 6 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (1.63%) Aviation
7 5 (1.63%) Fire and Rescue
7 5 (1.63%) Military
7 5 (1.63%) Police
8 4 (1.31%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.31%) Telecoms
9 3 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.98%) Law
9 3 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.65%) Corporate Banking
10 2 (0.65%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.33%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 50 (16.34%) Senior
2 35 (11.44%) Developer
3 33 (10.78%) Linux Engineer
4 30 (9.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 28 (9.15%) Security Engineer
6 23 (7.52%) Java Developer
7 22 (7.19%) DevOps Engineer
8 18 (5.88%) Cloud Engineer
9 17 (5.56%) Consultant
10 16 (5.23%) DBA
10 16 (5.23%) Unix Engineer
11 14 (4.58%) Senior Developer
11 14 (4.58%) Software Engineer
12 13 (4.25%) Senior Java Developer
13 11 (3.59%) Lead
13 11 (3.59%) Security Consultant
14 10 (3.27%) Analyst
14 10 (3.27%) Data Centre Engineer
14 10 (3.27%) Unix Linux Engineer
15 9 (2.94%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (6.54%) Kafka
2 16 (5.23%) JAX-RS
3 15 (4.90%) ActiveMQ
3 15 (4.90%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 12 (3.92%) .NET
5 11 (3.59%) REST
6 10 (3.27%) LDAP
6 10 (3.27%) Redfish
7 9 (2.94%) Middleware
8 8 (2.61%) YAML
9 7 (2.29%) JSON
10 6 (1.96%) .NET Core
10 6 (1.96%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (1.96%) RabbitMQ
11 5 (1.63%) ARM Templates
11 5 (1.63%) XML
12 4 (1.31%) Flash
12 4 (1.31%) Node.js
12 4 (1.31%) OpenID
12 4 (1.31%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 35 (11.44%) Cloud Native
2 29 (9.48%) Data Centre
2 29 (9.48%) Linux Command Line
3 27 (8.82%) Security Posture
4 19 (6.21%) Replication
5 14 (4.58%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (4.58%) Public Cloud
6 13 (4.25%) Management Information System
6 13 (4.25%) PKI
7 12 (3.92%) Cloud Security Posture
7 12 (3.92%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (3.92%) Hybrid Cloud
8 11 (3.59%) Mainframe
9 9 (2.94%) Distributed Systems
10 7 (2.29%) Enterprise Cloud
11 6 (1.96%) Enterprise Storage
12 5 (1.63%) Robotics
13 4 (1.31%) EMC VMAX
14 3 (0.98%) BYOD
14 3 (0.98%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 99 (32.35%) Windows
2 85 (27.78%) Unix
3 71 (23.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 32 (10.46%) AIX
5 24 (7.84%) Windows Server
6 22 (7.19%) Solaris
7 12 (3.92%) Mac OS X
8 9 (2.94%) Ubuntu
8 9 (2.94%) VMS
9 8 (2.61%) Oracle Linux
10 6 (1.96%) CentOS
11 5 (1.63%) CoreOS
11 5 (1.63%) HPUX
11 5 (1.63%) SUSE
11 5 (1.63%) zOS
12 3 (0.98%) Data ONTAP
12 3 (0.98%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.65%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.65%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (31.70%) CI/CD
2 81 (26.47%) DevOps
3 76 (24.84%) Infrastructure as Code
4 74 (24.18%) Agile
5 51 (16.67%) Migration
6 46 (15.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 45 (14.71%) Continuous Improvement
8 42 (13.73%) Test Automation
9 41 (13.40%) Observability
10 40 (13.07%) Cloud Security
11 36 (11.76%) Change Management
11 36 (11.76%) High Availability
11 36 (11.76%) Infrastructure Automation
11 36 (11.76%) Problem-Solving
12 34 (11.11%) Performance Tuning
13 33 (10.78%) ITIL
14 32 (10.46%) Roadmaps
15 29 (9.48%) BDD
15 29 (9.48%) Microservices
15 29 (9.48%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 112 (36.60%) Python
2 77 (25.16%) Bash
3 68 (22.22%) PowerShell
4 53 (17.32%) Java
5 47 (15.36%) SQL
6 16 (5.23%) Shell Script
7 13 (4.25%) Bicep
7 13 (4.25%) JavaScript
8 12 (3.92%) C#
9 6 (1.96%) Go
9 6 (1.96%) Rust
9 6 (1.96%) TypeScript
10 5 (1.63%) JCL
11 4 (1.31%) Kotlin
12 3 (0.98%) COBOL
12 3 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.65%) DCL
13 2 (0.65%) Groovy
13 2 (0.65%) REXX
13 2 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 57 (18.63%) Security Cleared
2 44 (14.38%) SC Cleared
3 32 (10.46%) CISSP
3 32 (10.46%) Degree
4 20 (6.54%) AWS Certification
5 17 (5.56%) Azure Certification
6 13 (4.25%) CompTIA Security+
7 9 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (1.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (1.96%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.96%) MCSE
9 6 (1.96%) RHCE
10 5 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (1.63%) MCSA
11 4 (1.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 4 (1.31%) OCP
11 4 (1.31%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (0.98%) CISM
12 3 (0.98%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.94%) HIPAA
2 7 (2.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (1.96%) NIST
4 5 (1.63%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 5 (1.63%) GDPR
5 4 (1.31%) GRC
6 3 (0.98%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.98%) QA
6 3 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.65%) SLA
8 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
8 1 (0.33%) GxP
8 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 57 (18.63%) Docker
2 42 (13.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (11.76%) Virtual Machines
4 21 (6.86%) Active Directory
5 18 (5.88%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (5.23%) KVM
6 16 (5.23%) NFS
6 16 (5.23%) vSphere
7 12 (3.92%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (3.59%) Firmware
9 10 (3.27%) Hyper-V
10 8 (2.61%) VMware NSX
11 5 (1.63%) Time Sharing Option
12 4 (1.31%) GPFS
13 3 (0.98%) Ceph
13 3 (0.98%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 2 (0.65%) SRDF
15 1 (0.33%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 1 (0.33%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 1 (0.33%) zsh
Systems Management
1 99 (32.35%) Terraform
2 87 (28.43%) Ansible
3 78 (25.49%) Kubernetes
4 23 (7.52%) Oracle RMAN
5 21 (6.86%) Progress Chef
6 19 (6.21%) Data Guard
6 19 (6.21%) Grafana
6 19 (6.21%) Prometheus
7 10 (3.27%) Dell DRAC
8 9 (2.94%) Packer
9 8 (2.61%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 8 (2.61%) vCenter Server
10 7 (2.29%) PowerCLI
10 7 (2.29%) vRealize
11 6 (1.96%) Nessus
12 5 (1.63%) Argo
12 5 (1.63%) CASB
12 5 (1.63%) Istio
12 5 (1.63%) Puppet
13 4 (1.31%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 49 (16.01%) Oracle
2 46 (15.03%) VMware
3 43 (14.05%) Red Hat
4 37 (12.09%) Microsoft
5 23 (7.52%) Google
5 23 (7.52%) IBM
6 16 (5.23%) Cisco
7 14 (4.58%) Splunk
8 13 (4.25%) ServiceNow
9 10 (3.27%) CyberArk
10 9 (2.94%) Broadcom
10 9 (2.94%) Dell
10 9 (2.94%) HP
11 8 (2.61%) Dynatrace
12 7 (2.29%) Tenable
13 6 (1.96%) Remedy
14 5 (1.63%) Brocade
14 5 (1.63%) Sybase
14 5 (1.63%) Varonis
15 4 (1.31%) Databricks