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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 32 50
Rank change year-on-year -21 +18 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 285 231 152
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 3.75% 5.90% 3.70%
As % of the Operating Systems category 32.83% 37.44% 28.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 175 157 100
10th Percentile £358 £315 £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 £640
90th Percentile £650 £700 £700
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 4
10th Percentile £18.90 - -
25th Percentile £23.36 - £47.00
Median hourly rate £36.67 £70.00 £50.75
Median % change year-on-year -47.61% +37.93% +125.56%
75th Percentile £49.06 - £62.33
90th Percentile £49.63 - £73.29
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 868 617 527
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.43% 15.76% 12.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 581 413 337
10th Percentile £185 £178 £184
25th Percentile £250 £270 £308
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £470
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -14.89% +10.59%
75th Percentile £525 £538 £594
90th Percentile £615 £624 £800
England median daily rate £465 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 26 41
10th Percentile £13.89 £13.00 £13.87
25th Percentile £16.90 £15.50 £15.63
Median hourly rate £19.00 £17.98 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% +2.73% -16.67%
75th Percentile £38.38 £18.87 £22.00
90th Percentile £178.75 £20.54 £32.50
England median hourly rate £35.79 £25.15 £57.25
% change year-on-year +42.30% -56.07% +20.11%

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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 -14 141 £497 +23.63% 161
Yorkshire -26 121 £515 +2.95% 53
North East -14 30 £475 -17.39% 42
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 (4.56%) Confluence
2 4 (1.40%) Apache
2 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.05%) nginx
3 3 (1.05%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.05%) WebSphere
4 2 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.70%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.70%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.35%) CICS
5 1 (0.35%) CMS
5 1 (0.35%) SAS
5 1 (0.35%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.35%) Traefik
Applications
1 6 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 102 (35.79%) AWS
2 83 (29.12%) Azure
3 51 (17.89%) GCP
4 29 (10.18%) GitHub
5 20 (7.02%) OpenShift
6 19 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
7 18 (6.32%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 17 (5.96%) OCI
9 14 (4.91%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (4.91%) Amazon EKS
9 14 (4.91%) AWS CloudFormation
10 13 (4.56%) Serverless
10 13 (4.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 11 (3.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 11 (3.86%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (3.86%) Entra ID
11 11 (3.86%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
13 8 (2.81%) AWS KMS
14 7 (2.46%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 30 (10.53%) Firewall
2 18 (6.32%) DNS
2 18 (6.32%) Network Security
3 14 (4.91%) SAN
4 10 (3.51%) TCP/IP
5 7 (2.46%) SD-WAN
5 7 (2.46%) WAN
5 7 (2.46%) Wireless
6 6 (2.11%) 3GPP
6 6 (2.11%) DHCP
6 6 (2.11%) RTP
6 6 (2.11%) VPN
6 6 (2.11%) VSAN
6 6 (2.11%) Wireshark
7 5 (1.75%) NAS
8 4 (1.40%) iSCSI
9 3 (1.05%) Fibre Channel
9 3 (1.05%) FTP
9 3 (1.05%) HTTP
9 3 (1.05%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.42%) Oracle Database
2 16 (5.61%) RDBMS
2 16 (5.61%) Relational Database
3 14 (4.91%) Oracle Exadata
4 12 (4.21%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.21%) NoSQL
5 8 (2.81%) SQL Server
6 6 (2.11%) DynamoDB
6 6 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (1.75%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (1.75%) Sybase ASE
8 4 (1.40%) Data Lake
9 3 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.05%) Big Data
9 3 (1.05%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.05%) Oracle Database 12c
9 3 (1.05%) Power BI
10 2 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 42 (14.74%) Git
2 25 (8.77%) GitLab
3 21 (7.37%) JIRA
4 20 (7.02%) Jenkins
5 9 (3.16%) Mockito
6 7 (2.46%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (2.11%) TeamCity
8 5 (1.75%) Cucumber
8 5 (1.75%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.70%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.70%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.70%) Gatling
9 2 (0.70%) Gradle
9 2 (0.70%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.70%) Maven
9 2 (0.70%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.70%) Toad
10 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.35%) Jaeger
10 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 65 (22.81%) Social Skills
2 57 (20.00%) Finance
3 28 (9.82%) Banking
4 25 (8.77%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (8.77%) Public Sector
5 10 (3.51%) Legal
6 7 (2.46%) Military
7 6 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.75%) Aviation
8 5 (1.75%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.75%) Police
9 4 (1.40%) Corporate Banking
9 4 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.40%) Investment Banking
9 4 (1.40%) Law
10 3 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.05%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.35%) Electronics
11 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 45 (15.79%) Senior
2 30 (10.53%) Linux Engineer
3 29 (10.18%) Developer
3 29 (10.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (8.07%) DevOps Engineer
5 21 (7.37%) Security Engineer
6 19 (6.67%) Cloud Engineer
7 16 (5.61%) Unix Engineer
8 15 (5.26%) Consultant
9 14 (4.91%) Lead
10 13 (4.56%) Java Developer
11 12 (4.21%) AWS Engineer
11 12 (4.21%) DBA
11 12 (4.21%) Senior Developer
12 11 (3.86%) Cloud Security Engineer
13 10 (3.51%) Platform Engineer
13 10 (3.51%) Software Engineer
13 10 (3.51%) Support Engineer
13 10 (3.51%) Unix Linux Engineer
14 9 (3.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (35.44%) Terraform
2 16 (5.61%) Kafka
3 14 (4.91%) .NET
3 14 (4.91%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 14 (4.91%) REST
4 10 (3.51%) JSON
5 9 (3.16%) ActiveMQ
5 9 (3.16%) JAX-RS
6 8 (2.81%) ARM Templates
6 8 (2.81%) Django
6 8 (2.81%) YAML
7 7 (2.46%) Middleware
8 6 (2.11%) .NET Core
8 6 (2.11%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (2.11%) Redfish
9 5 (1.75%) Node.js
10 4 (1.40%) Flask
10 4 (1.40%) LDAP
10 4 (1.40%) RESTful
10 4 (1.40%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 36 (12.63%) Cloud Native
2 24 (8.42%) Data Centre
3 23 (8.07%) Linux Command Line
4 19 (6.67%) Security Posture
5 18 (6.32%) PKI
5 18 (6.32%) Replication
6 17 (5.96%) Public Cloud
7 14 (4.91%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (4.56%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (4.56%) Management Information System
9 12 (4.21%) Hybrid Cloud
10 11 (3.86%) Distributed Systems
11 10 (3.51%) Mainframe
12 9 (3.16%) Enterprise Cloud
13 7 (2.46%) Onboarding
14 6 (2.11%) Cloud Security Posture
15 5 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
15 5 (1.75%) Private Cloud
15 5 (1.75%) Robotics
16 4 (1.40%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 89 (31.23%) Windows
2 71 (24.91%) Unix
3 65 (22.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 26 (9.12%) AIX
4 26 (9.12%) Windows Server
5 20 (7.02%) Solaris
6 8 (2.81%) Ubuntu
6 8 (2.81%) VMS
7 7 (2.46%) CentOS
8 6 (2.11%) Oracle Linux
9 5 (1.75%) HPUX
9 5 (1.75%) SUSE
9 5 (1.75%) zOS
10 4 (1.40%) Mac OS
10 4 (1.40%) Mac OS X
11 2 (0.70%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.70%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.70%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.35%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (36.84%) CI/CD
2 92 (32.28%) Infrastructure as Code
3 79 (27.72%) DevOps
4 69 (24.21%) Agile
5 49 (17.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 48 (16.84%) Observability
7 47 (16.49%) Continuous Improvement
7 47 (16.49%) Migration
8 43 (15.09%) Change Management
9 40 (14.04%) Infrastructure Automation
10 39 (13.68%) High Availability
11 37 (12.98%) Cloud Security
12 34 (11.93%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (10.88%) ITIL
14 29 (10.18%) Disaster Recovery
14 29 (10.18%) Platform Engineering
14 29 (10.18%) Test Automation
15 28 (9.82%) Containerisation
15 28 (9.82%) Performance Tuning
15 28 (9.82%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 115 (40.35%) Python
2 78 (27.37%) Bash
3 76 (26.67%) PowerShell
4 48 (16.84%) Java
5 41 (14.39%) SQL
6 17 (5.96%) Shell Script
7 16 (5.61%) Bicep
8 13 (4.56%) C#
9 11 (3.86%) JavaScript
10 9 (3.16%) Go
11 5 (1.75%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (1.40%) Groovy
12 4 (1.40%) JCL
12 4 (1.40%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.40%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (1.05%) Rust
13 3 (1.05%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.70%) C++
14 2 (0.70%) Perl
14 2 (0.70%) REXX
Qualifications
1 56 (19.65%) Security Cleared
2 44 (15.44%) SC Cleared
3 33 (11.58%) Degree
4 27 (9.47%) CISSP
5 20 (7.02%) AWS Certification
5 20 (7.02%) Azure Certification
6 7 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (2.46%) CompTIA Security+
7 6 (2.11%) CISM
7 6 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.11%) RHCE
8 5 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (1.40%) CEH
9 4 (1.40%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 3 (1.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.05%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (1.05%) Network+ Certification
10 3 (1.05%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (1.75%) HIPAA
3 4 (1.40%) GRC
3 4 (1.40%) NIST
3 4 (1.40%) SLA
4 3 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.70%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (0.35%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.35%) Def Stans
6 1 (0.35%) GDPR
6 1 (0.35%) NCSC
6 1 (0.35%) QA
6 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 54 (18.95%) Docker
2 39 (13.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 32 (11.23%) Virtual Machines
4 23 (8.07%) Active Directory
5 17 (5.96%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (5.61%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (4.91%) vSphere
8 13 (4.56%) KVM
9 11 (3.86%) NFS
10 10 (3.51%) Firmware
11 7 (2.46%) Hyper-V
12 6 (2.11%) VMware NSX
13 4 (1.40%) Ceph
13 4 (1.40%) Time Sharing Option
14 3 (1.05%) GPFS
14 3 (1.05%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 3 (1.05%) Virtual Servers
15 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 1 (0.35%) NetIQ eDirectory
16 1 (0.35%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 81 (28.42%) Ansible
2 78 (27.37%) Kubernetes
3 21 (7.37%) Grafana
3 21 (7.37%) Prometheus
4 20 (7.02%) Progress Chef
5 19 (6.67%) Oracle RMAN
6 18 (6.32%) Data Guard
7 9 (3.16%) vCenter Server
8 8 (2.81%) Packer
9 7 (2.46%) Istio
9 7 (2.46%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 6 (2.11%) Dell DRAC
11 5 (1.75%) vMotion
11 5 (1.75%) vRealize
11 5 (1.75%) VxRail
12 4 (1.40%) Argo
12 4 (1.40%) Oracle ZFS
12 4 (1.40%) PowerCLI
12 4 (1.40%) Tivoli
12 4 (1.40%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 46 (16.14%) Oracle
2 42 (14.74%) Microsoft
2 42 (14.74%) VMware
3 40 (14.04%) Red Hat
4 24 (8.42%) Google
5 20 (7.02%) Splunk
6 17 (5.96%) IBM
7 16 (5.61%) Cisco
8 12 (4.21%) Dell
9 9 (3.16%) ServiceNow
10 7 (2.46%) Dynatrace
11 6 (2.11%) HP
12 5 (1.75%) AppDynamics
12 5 (1.75%) Broadcom
12 5 (1.75%) Databricks
12 5 (1.75%) Juniper
12 5 (1.75%) Sybase
12 5 (1.75%) Tenable
13 4 (1.40%) CyberArk
13 4 (1.40%) SAP