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

6 months to
22 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 28 42
Rank change year-on-year -17 +14 -10
Contract jobs citing Linux 302 219 191
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.39% 6.29% 3.89%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.02% 38.49% 27.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 145 130
10th Percentile £358 £350 £350
25th Percentile £400 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £520 £506
Median % change year-on-year -6.97% +2.67% -4.03%
75th Percentile £572 £588 £609
90th Percentile £652 £677 £651
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -7.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 11
10th Percentile £28.94 - £21.25
25th Percentile £41.94 - £47.50
Median hourly rate £44.72 £70.00 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.11% +45.83% +81.13%
75th Percentile £49.69 - £60.00
90th Percentile £62.13 - £65.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 774 569 683
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.24% 16.33% 13.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 514 367 458
10th Percentile £173 £181 £178
25th Percentile £301 £269 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +11.75% -5.88% -10.53%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £549
90th Percentile £624 £620 £670
England median daily rate £459 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -1.29% -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 21 82
10th Percentile £16.62 £13.00 -
25th Percentile £17.25 £14.20 £10.95
Median hourly rate £23.41 £17.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.74% +9.38% -28.89%
75th Percentile £47.05 £18.87 £21.13
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.75 £48.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £18.94 £24.18
% change year-on-year +71.64% -21.69% -46.33%

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 22 June 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 22 June 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 22 June 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
Yorkshire -22 155 £500 -6.98% 24
North West -22 133 £469 +16.67% 56
North East -31 15 £446 -6.54% 16
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 (6.95%) Confluence
2 9 (2.98%) CICS
3 5 (1.66%) TPMS
4 3 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.99%) nginx
5 2 (0.66%) Apache
5 2 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.66%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.33%) CMS
Applications
1 7 (2.32%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.33%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.33%) Odoo
2 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 86 (28.48%) AWS
2 61 (20.20%) Azure
3 43 (14.24%) GCP
4 39 (12.91%) OpenShift
5 25 (8.28%) GitHub
6 18 (5.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (4.30%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 9 (2.98%) Amazon EC2
8 9 (2.98%) Amazon EKS
8 9 (2.98%) Amazon S3
9 7 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.32%) Serverless
10 6 (1.99%) AWS Lambda
10 6 (1.99%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (1.66%) Amazon SQS
11 5 (1.66%) IaaS
11 5 (1.66%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (1.66%) OCI
12 4 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 4 (1.32%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 48 (15.89%) Firewall
2 25 (8.28%) SAN
3 17 (5.63%) DNS
4 13 (4.30%) TCP/IP
5 11 (3.64%) Network Security
6 10 (3.31%) SSL
7 9 (2.98%) VSAN
8 7 (2.32%) NAS
9 6 (1.99%) 3GPP
9 6 (1.99%) RTP
9 6 (1.99%) SNMP
9 6 (1.99%) Wireshark
10 5 (1.66%) SSH
10 5 (1.66%) VPN
11 4 (1.32%) iSCSI
12 3 (0.99%) FTP
13 2 (0.66%) BIG-IP
13 2 (0.66%) DHCP
13 2 (0.66%) HTTP
13 2 (0.66%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (5.30%) MongoDB
1 16 (5.30%) Oracle Database
2 13 (4.30%) NoSQL
3 12 (3.97%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (3.97%) SQL Server
4 9 (2.98%) DataStage
4 9 (2.98%) Relational Database
5 7 (2.32%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (2.32%) RDBMS
6 6 (1.99%) Db2
7 4 (1.32%) Oracle Database 12c
7 4 (1.32%) Oracle Exadata
7 4 (1.32%) Sybase ASE
8 3 (0.99%) Amazon Aurora
8 3 (0.99%) BusinessObjects
8 3 (0.99%) DynamoDB
9 2 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.66%) Apache Cassandra
9 2 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
9 2 (0.66%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 34 (11.26%) Jenkins
1 34 (11.26%) JIRA
2 27 (8.94%) GitLab
3 21 (6.95%) Git
4 10 (3.31%) Mockito
5 6 (1.99%) Jaeger
5 6 (1.99%) TeamCity
6 3 (0.99%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.99%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.99%) Liquibase
6 3 (0.99%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.66%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.66%) Gatling
7 2 (0.66%) Gradle
7 2 (0.66%) LoadRunner
7 2 (0.66%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.66%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.33%) Hudson
General
1 79 (26.16%) Social Skills
2 71 (23.51%) Finance
3 33 (10.93%) Banking
4 28 (9.27%) Public Sector
5 21 (6.95%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (5.63%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.98%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (2.32%) Legal
10 6 (1.99%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.66%) Aviation
11 5 (1.66%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.66%) Police
12 4 (1.32%) Military
13 3 (0.99%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.66%) Advertising
14 2 (0.66%) Telecoms
15 1 (0.33%) Law
15 1 (0.33%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 39 (12.91%) Senior
2 29 (9.60%) Developer
3 25 (8.28%) DevOps Engineer
4 22 (7.28%) Linux Engineer
5 19 (6.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 19 (6.29%) Security Engineer
6 18 (5.96%) Java Developer
7 17 (5.63%) Consultant
7 17 (5.63%) Software Engineer
8 14 (4.64%) Lead
9 13 (4.30%) DBA
10 12 (3.97%) Analyst
10 12 (3.97%) Data Centre Engineer
10 12 (3.97%) Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.64%) Security Consultant
12 10 (3.31%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (2.98%) Designer
13 9 (2.98%) Infrastructure Designer
13 9 (2.98%) VMware Engineer
14 8 (2.65%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (6.29%) Middleware
2 16 (5.30%) Kafka
3 12 (3.97%) YAML
4 11 (3.64%) LDAP
5 10 (3.31%) JAX-RS
5 10 (3.31%) Redfish
5 10 (3.31%) REST
6 9 (2.98%) .NET
6 9 (2.98%) ActiveMQ
6 9 (2.98%) OpenTelemetry
7 8 (2.65%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (2.32%) Spring Boot
9 6 (1.99%) .NET Core
9 6 (1.99%) RabbitMQ
10 4 (1.32%) Flash
10 4 (1.32%) Node.js
10 4 (1.32%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 3 (0.99%) OpenID
11 3 (0.99%) RESTful
11 3 (0.99%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 40 (13.25%) Data Centre
2 31 (10.26%) Cloud Native
3 28 (9.27%) Linux Command Line
4 24 (7.95%) Security Posture
5 16 (5.30%) Mainframe
5 16 (5.30%) Management Information System
6 15 (4.97%) Replication
7 13 (4.30%) Data Protection Act
7 13 (4.30%) Distributed Systems
8 12 (3.97%) Hybrid Cloud
9 10 (3.31%) Cloud Security Posture
9 10 (3.31%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (3.31%) PKI
10 9 (2.98%) BYOD
10 9 (2.98%) VSAM
11 8 (2.65%) Public Cloud
12 7 (2.32%) Enterprise Storage
13 6 (1.99%) Onboarding
14 5 (1.66%) FlexPod
14 5 (1.66%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 115 (38.08%) Windows
2 74 (24.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 73 (24.17%) Unix
4 29 (9.60%) AIX
5 28 (9.27%) Windows Server
6 17 (5.63%) Solaris
7 16 (5.30%) Ubuntu
8 11 (3.64%) Mac OS X
8 11 (3.64%) VMS
9 10 (3.31%) CentOS
10 7 (2.32%) CoreOS
10 7 (2.32%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (1.66%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (1.66%) zOS
12 4 (1.32%) HPUX
12 4 (1.32%) SUSE
13 3 (0.99%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.33%) Check Point GAiA
14 1 (0.33%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (31.46%) CI/CD
2 91 (30.13%) DevOps
3 59 (19.54%) Agile
4 47 (15.56%) Problem-Solving
5 45 (14.90%) Infrastructure as Code
6 44 (14.57%) Migration
7 42 (13.91%) Observability
8 38 (12.58%) Continuous Improvement
9 37 (12.25%) Roadmaps
9 37 (12.25%) Test Automation
10 33 (10.93%) Performance Tuning
11 32 (10.60%) Microservices
12 31 (10.26%) Change Management
12 31 (10.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 30 (9.93%) Cloud Security
13 30 (9.93%) Containerisation
14 29 (9.60%) ITIL
15 27 (8.94%) Infrastructure Automation
16 26 (8.61%) Runbook
16 26 (8.61%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 119 (39.40%) Python
2 64 (21.19%) Bash
3 59 (19.54%) PowerShell
4 51 (16.89%) SQL
5 50 (16.56%) Java
6 16 (5.30%) Shell Script
7 14 (4.64%) JavaScript
8 12 (3.97%) Rust
9 11 (3.64%) Go
9 11 (3.64%) Perl
10 9 (2.98%) C#
10 9 (2.98%) COBOL
10 9 (2.98%) Ruby
11 8 (2.65%) TypeScript
12 5 (1.66%) JCL
13 4 (1.32%) Kotlin
14 3 (0.99%) Bicep
15 2 (0.66%) C++
15 2 (0.66%) REXX
15 2 (0.66%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 48 (15.89%) Security Cleared
2 36 (11.92%) Degree
3 32 (10.60%) CISSP
3 32 (10.60%) SC Cleared
4 18 (5.96%) AWS Certification
5 15 (4.97%) CompTIA Security+
5 15 (4.97%) RHCE
6 13 (4.30%) Azure Certification
7 7 (2.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 7 (2.32%) DV Cleared
7 7 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.99%) CISM
8 6 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.99%) OCP
8 6 (1.99%) Oracle Certification
9 5 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
9 5 (1.66%) FFIEC
9 5 (1.66%) MCSA
9 5 (1.66%) MCSE
10 3 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.31%) GDPR
2 9 (2.98%) HIPAA
2 9 (2.98%) NIST
3 8 (2.65%) PCI DSS
4 6 (1.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.66%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 5 (1.66%) GLBA
5 5 (1.66%) SLA
6 4 (1.32%) GRC
7 3 (0.99%) QA
7 3 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.33%) GxP
8 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
System Software
1 63 (20.86%) Docker
2 49 (16.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 48 (15.89%) Virtual Machines
4 22 (7.28%) KVM
5 19 (6.29%) Active Directory
5 19 (6.29%) NFS
5 19 (6.29%) vSphere
6 16 (5.30%) Hyper-V
7 15 (4.97%) Firmware
8 12 (3.97%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (2.32%) VMware NSX
10 5 (1.66%) Oracle RAC
10 5 (1.66%) Time Sharing Option
11 4 (1.32%) GPFS
12 3 (0.99%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 2 (0.66%) SRDF
14 1 (0.33%) Ceph
14 1 (0.33%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.33%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.33%) zsh
Systems Management
1 91 (30.13%) Ansible
2 75 (24.83%) Kubernetes
2 75 (24.83%) Terraform
3 24 (7.95%) Grafana
4 23 (7.62%) Prometheus
5 17 (5.63%) Progress Chef
6 12 (3.97%) Puppet
7 11 (3.64%) vCenter Server
8 10 (3.31%) Dell DRAC
8 10 (3.31%) Oracle RMAN
9 8 (2.65%) Packer
9 8 (2.65%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 7 (2.32%) PowerCLI
10 7 (2.32%) vRealize
11 6 (1.99%) Data Guard
11 6 (1.99%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.99%) Nessus
12 5 (1.66%) CASB
12 5 (1.66%) Kiali
12 5 (1.66%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 57 (18.87%) VMware
2 51 (16.89%) Red Hat
3 36 (11.92%) Oracle
4 31 (10.26%) IBM
5 27 (8.94%) Microsoft
5 27 (8.94%) Splunk
6 23 (7.62%) Google
7 11 (3.64%) Cisco
8 10 (3.31%) CyberArk
8 10 (3.31%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.98%) Broadcom
9 9 (2.98%) Dell
10 8 (2.65%) Dynatrace
10 8 (2.65%) HP
11 7 (2.32%) Tenable
12 6 (1.99%) NetApp
12 6 (1.99%) Remedy
13 5 (1.66%) Brocade
13 5 (1.66%) Thales
13 5 (1.66%) Varonis