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

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 32 40
Rank change year-on-year -10 +8 -9
Contract jobs citing Linux 297 201 188
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.51% 6.01% 3.98%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.37% 37.71% 27.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 130 129
10th Percentile £358 £350 £358
25th Percentile £400 £392 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -6.32%
75th Percentile £544 £595 £600
90th Percentile £650 £710 £650
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 10
10th Percentile £31.54 - £21.25
25th Percentile - - £47.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £70.00 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.09% +45.83% +28.00%
75th Percentile £49.38 - £60.56
90th Percentile £59.70 - £66.56
England median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -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 774 533 693
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.75% 15.92% 14.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 508 340 471
10th Percentile £155 £177 £165
25th Percentile £300 £250 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -10.53%
75th Percentile £525 £538 £531
90th Percentile £615 £625 £650
England median daily rate £455 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -2.67% -1.58% -6.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 20 77
10th Percentile £16.50 £13.00 -
25th Percentile £18.50 £13.90 £10.95
Median hourly rate £26.66 £17.47 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.60% +9.19% -39.62%
75th Percentile £63.50 £18.91 £19.18
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.75 £48.00
England median hourly rate £35.22 £20.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +76.10% -11.11% -48.99%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -19 153 £480 -10.70% 27
North West -17 130 £468 -4.93% 60
North East -23 14 £446 -18.12% 21
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 18 (6.06%) Confluence
2 9 (3.03%) CICS
3 5 (1.68%) TPMS
4 3 (1.01%) nginx
5 2 (0.67%) Apache
5 2 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.67%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.34%) CMS
6 1 (0.34%) JBoss
6 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 7 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.34%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.34%) Odoo
2 1 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 89 (29.97%) AWS
2 61 (20.54%) Azure
3 47 (15.82%) OpenShift
4 44 (14.81%) GCP
5 26 (8.75%) GitHub
6 17 (5.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 11 (3.70%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 10 (3.37%) GitHub Actions
9 9 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
9 9 (3.03%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (3.03%) Amazon S3
9 9 (3.03%) Serverless
10 8 (2.69%) AWS Lambda
11 6 (2.02%) Amazon ECS
11 6 (2.02%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (1.68%) Amazon SQS
12 5 (1.68%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (1.68%) IaaS
13 4 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 4 (1.35%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 53 (17.85%) Firewall
2 24 (8.08%) SAN
3 20 (6.73%) DNS
4 16 (5.39%) TCP/IP
5 10 (3.37%) SSL
6 9 (3.03%) VSAN
7 8 (2.69%) Network Security
8 7 (2.36%) NAS
9 6 (2.02%) 3GPP
9 6 (2.02%) RTP
9 6 (2.02%) SNMP
9 6 (2.02%) VPN
9 6 (2.02%) Wireshark
10 5 (1.68%) SSH
11 4 (1.35%) iSCSI
12 3 (1.01%) FTP
13 2 (0.67%) DHCP
13 2 (0.67%) HTTP
13 2 (0.67%) Intrusion Detection
13 2 (0.67%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (6.40%) MongoDB
2 14 (4.71%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (4.38%) NoSQL
4 12 (4.04%) Oracle Database
5 11 (3.70%) SQL Server
6 9 (3.03%) DataStage
7 7 (2.36%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (2.02%) DB2
8 6 (2.02%) Relational Database
9 4 (1.35%) Oracle Database 12c
9 4 (1.35%) RDBMS
10 3 (1.01%) Amazon Aurora
10 3 (1.01%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.67%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.67%) Oracle Exadata
11 2 (0.67%) Power BI
12 1 (0.34%) SAP HANA
12 1 (0.34%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 37 (12.46%) Jenkins
2 34 (11.45%) JIRA
3 28 (9.43%) GitLab
4 21 (7.07%) Git
5 10 (3.37%) Mockito
6 9 (3.03%) Jaeger
7 6 (2.02%) TeamCity
8 3 (1.01%) Bitbucket
8 3 (1.01%) CircleCI
8 3 (1.01%) Liquibase
8 3 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.67%) Gradle
10 1 (0.34%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.34%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.34%) Gatling
10 1 (0.34%) Hudson
10 1 (0.34%) JUnit
10 1 (0.34%) LoadRunner
10 1 (0.34%) Maven
10 1 (0.34%) SonarQube
General
1 82 (27.61%) Social Skills
2 68 (22.90%) Finance
3 32 (10.77%) Banking
3 32 (10.77%) Public Sector
4 21 (7.07%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (5.72%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (3.03%) Financial Institution
6 9 (3.03%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.68%) Aviation
8 5 (1.68%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.68%) Legal
8 5 (1.68%) Police
9 4 (1.35%) Law
10 3 (1.01%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.67%) Advertising
11 2 (0.67%) Military
12 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.34%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.34%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 41 (13.80%) Senior
2 28 (9.43%) Developer
3 23 (7.74%) DevOps Engineer
4 21 (7.07%) Security Engineer
5 19 (6.40%) Java Developer
5 19 (6.40%) Linux Engineer
6 17 (5.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 17 (5.72%) Software Engineer
7 16 (5.39%) Lead
8 14 (4.71%) Consultant
9 13 (4.38%) Analyst
10 12 (4.04%) Platform Engineer
11 11 (3.70%) Data Centre Engineer
12 10 (3.37%) Cloud Engineer
12 10 (3.37%) Security Consultant
13 9 (3.03%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (3.03%) DBA
13 9 (3.03%) Designer
13 9 (3.03%) Infrastructure Designer
14 8 (2.69%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (7.41%) Kafka
2 21 (7.07%) Middleware
3 12 (4.04%) Elastic Stack
3 12 (4.04%) OpenTelemetry
3 12 (4.04%) YAML
4 11 (3.70%) LDAP
5 10 (3.37%) JAX-RS
5 10 (3.37%) REST
5 10 (3.37%) Spring Boot
6 9 (3.03%) .NET
6 9 (3.03%) ActiveMQ
6 9 (3.03%) Redfish
7 6 (2.02%) .NET Core
8 4 (1.35%) Flash
8 4 (1.35%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (1.35%) SOAP
9 3 (1.01%) OpenID
9 3 (1.01%) RESTful
9 3 (1.01%) XML
10 2 (0.67%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (13.13%) Data Centre
2 29 (9.76%) Cloud Native
3 25 (8.42%) Security Posture
4 24 (8.08%) Linux Command Line
5 18 (6.06%) Management Information System
6 16 (5.39%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (5.05%) Hybrid Cloud
8 14 (4.71%) Mainframe
9 13 (4.38%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (3.70%) Replication
11 10 (3.37%) Cloud Security Posture
12 9 (3.03%) BYOD
12 9 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
12 9 (3.03%) VSAM
13 7 (2.36%) Onboarding
13 7 (2.36%) PKI
13 7 (2.36%) Product Ownership
14 6 (2.02%) Enterprise Storage
14 6 (2.02%) Public Cloud
15 5 (1.68%) FlexPod
Operating Systems
1 114 (38.38%) Windows
2 69 (23.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 69 (23.23%) Unix
3 27 (9.09%) AIX
3 27 (9.09%) Windows Server
4 16 (5.39%) Ubuntu
5 15 (5.05%) Solaris
6 11 (3.70%) Mac OS X
6 11 (3.70%) VMS
7 10 (3.37%) CentOS
8 7 (2.36%) CoreOS
8 7 (2.36%) Oracle Linux
9 5 (1.68%) Data ONTAP
9 5 (1.68%) zOS
10 4 (1.35%) HPUX
10 4 (1.35%) SUSE
11 3 (1.01%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.34%) Embedded Linux
12 1 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (34.68%) CI/CD
2 95 (31.99%) DevOps
3 57 (19.19%) Agile
4 54 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
5 48 (16.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 47 (15.82%) Observability
7 40 (13.47%) Migration
8 39 (13.13%) Roadmaps
9 38 (12.79%) Microservices
10 35 (11.78%) Test Automation
11 34 (11.45%) Containerisation
12 33 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 33 (11.11%) Infrastructure Automation
13 30 (10.10%) Cybersecurity
14 29 (9.76%) Performance Tuning
14 29 (9.76%) Root Cause Analysis
15 28 (9.43%) Cloud Security
16 27 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 27 (9.09%) Vulnerability Management
17 26 (8.75%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 120 (40.40%) Python
2 65 (21.89%) Bash
3 55 (18.52%) Java
4 54 (18.18%) PowerShell
5 52 (17.51%) SQL
6 16 (5.39%) Shell Script
7 15 (5.05%) Rust
8 14 (4.71%) Go
9 13 (4.38%) JavaScript
10 11 (3.70%) Ruby
11 10 (3.37%) Perl
12 9 (3.03%) C#
12 9 (3.03%) COBOL
13 8 (2.69%) TypeScript
14 5 (1.68%) JCL
15 4 (1.35%) Kotlin
16 2 (0.67%) C
16 2 (0.67%) C++
16 2 (0.67%) REXX
16 2 (0.67%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 47 (15.82%) Security Cleared
2 37 (12.46%) Degree
3 33 (11.11%) CISSP
4 31 (10.44%) SC Cleared
5 17 (5.72%) AWS Certification
6 16 (5.39%) CompTIA Security+
7 15 (5.05%) RHCE
8 12 (4.04%) Azure Certification
9 8 (2.69%) CISM
10 7 (2.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (2.36%) DV Cleared
10 7 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (2.02%) OCP
11 6 (2.02%) Oracle Certification
12 5 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
12 5 (1.68%) FFIEC
12 5 (1.68%) MCSA
12 5 (1.68%) MCSE
13 3 (1.01%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.70%) GDPR
2 9 (3.03%) HIPAA
2 9 (3.03%) NIST
3 8 (2.69%) PCI DSS
3 8 (2.69%) SLA
4 6 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.68%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 5 (1.68%) GLBA
6 4 (1.35%) GRC
7 3 (1.01%) QA
7 3 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.34%) GxP
8 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 64 (21.55%) Docker
2 46 (15.49%) VMware Infrastructure
3 43 (14.48%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (6.40%) Active Directory
4 19 (6.40%) NFS
4 19 (6.40%) vSphere
5 18 (6.06%) Hyper-V
6 17 (5.72%) KVM
7 14 (4.71%) Firmware
8 12 (4.04%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (2.36%) VMware NSX
10 5 (1.68%) Time Sharing Option
11 4 (1.35%) GPFS
12 3 (1.01%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 2 (0.67%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.67%) SRDF
14 1 (0.34%) Ceph
14 1 (0.34%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.34%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.34%) zsh
Systems Management
1 92 (30.98%) Ansible
2 87 (29.29%) Kubernetes
3 82 (27.61%) Terraform
4 33 (11.11%) Grafana
5 28 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 16 (5.39%) Progress Chef
7 13 (4.38%) Puppet
8 11 (3.70%) vCenter Server
9 9 (3.03%) Dell DRAC
10 8 (2.69%) Kiali
10 8 (2.69%) Oracle RMAN
10 8 (2.69%) Packer
10 8 (2.69%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 7 (2.36%) PowerCLI
11 7 (2.36%) vRealize
12 6 (2.02%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (2.02%) Nessus
13 5 (1.68%) CASB
13 5 (1.68%) SnapMirror
14 4 (1.35%) Argo
Vendors
1 57 (19.19%) VMware
2 49 (16.50%) Red Hat
3 32 (10.77%) Oracle
3 32 (10.77%) Splunk
4 29 (9.76%) IBM
5 26 (8.75%) Microsoft
6 21 (7.07%) Google
7 13 (4.38%) ServiceNow
8 11 (3.70%) CyberArk
9 10 (3.37%) Cisco
10 9 (3.03%) Broadcom
10 9 (3.03%) Dell
11 8 (2.69%) HP
12 7 (2.36%) Tenable
13 6 (2.02%) Dynatrace
13 6 (2.02%) NetApp
13 6 (2.02%) Remedy
14 5 (1.68%) Brocade
14 5 (1.68%) Thales
14 5 (1.68%) Varonis