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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 41 41 41
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -22
Contract jobs citing Linux 269 146 194
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 5.66% 4.39% 4.13%
As % of the Operating Systems category 36.85% 29.49% 29.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 194 78 115
10th Percentile £313 £356 £331
25th Percentile £400 £453 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £566 £500
Median % change year-on-year -13.17% +13.10% -9.09%
75th Percentile £550 £648 £588
90th Percentile £688 £750 £633
England median daily rate £510 £551 £550
% change year-on-year -7.44% +0.18% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 12
10th Percentile - £43.10 -
25th Percentile - £47.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £63.79 £44.82
Median % change year-on-year -34.25% +42.33% -1.62%
75th Percentile - £80.59 £51.09
90th Percentile £61.33 £83.70 £63.75
England median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +10.83% -7.69%

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 730 495 666
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 15.35% 14.90% 14.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 524 283 434
10th Percentile £144 £163 £163
25th Percentile £190 £233 £255
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £370 £400 £422
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -5.21% -4.52%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £525
90th Percentile £611 £640 £588
England median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -6.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 22 45
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £16.37
25th Percentile £18.87 £15.68 £17.72
Median hourly rate £22.50 £18.13 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.14% -17.61% -2.22%
75th Percentile £41.94 £27.80 £45.88
90th Percentile £68.70 £66.46 £76.00
England median hourly rate £25.00 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -52.38% +75.00% +20.00%

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 13 January 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 13 January 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 13 January 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 +12 168 £500 -20.00% 53
North West -6 96 £453 -17.64% 64
North East -12 11 £550 +8.64% 27
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 (7.43%) Apache
2 13 (4.83%) JBoss
2 13 (4.83%) WebSphere
3 11 (4.09%) IIS
3 11 (4.09%) WebSphere Application Server
4 10 (3.72%) iPlanet
4 10 (3.72%) TPMS
5 7 (2.60%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (2.23%) OpenStack
6 6 (2.23%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.49%) Tomcat
8 3 (1.12%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (1.12%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.74%) CICS
10 1 (0.37%) CMS
10 1 (0.37%) Confluence
10 1 (0.37%) Documentum
10 1 (0.37%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 11 (4.09%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.37%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 98 (36.43%) AWS
2 62 (23.05%) GCP
3 42 (15.61%) Azure
4 35 (13.01%) Serverless
5 33 (12.27%) OpenShift
6 26 (9.67%) GitHub
7 17 (6.32%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (5.20%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (4.09%) Google Workspace
10 10 (3.72%) Amazon EC2
11 9 (3.35%) AWS KMS
11 9 (3.35%) Entra ID
12 8 (2.97%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (2.97%) IaaS
12 8 (2.97%) PaaS
12 8 (2.97%) SaaS
13 7 (2.60%) Amazon ECS
14 6 (2.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 5 (1.86%) Amazon S3
16 4 (1.49%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 70 (26.02%) Firewall
2 18 (6.69%) Network Security
3 14 (5.20%) SNMP
3 14 (5.20%) SSL
4 13 (4.83%) TCP/IP
5 12 (4.46%) DNS
6 10 (3.72%) Kerberos
6 10 (3.72%) SSH
7 8 (2.97%) VPN
8 7 (2.60%) VLAN
9 6 (2.23%) BGP
9 6 (2.23%) Software-Defined Networking
9 6 (2.23%) WebEx
10 4 (1.49%) HTTP
11 3 (1.12%) DHCP
12 2 (0.74%) HTTPS
12 2 (0.74%) NAS
12 2 (0.74%) VSAN
13 1 (0.37%) Multicast
13 1 (0.37%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (12.64%) NoSQL
2 31 (11.52%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (9.29%) Oracle Database
4 22 (8.18%) MongoDB
5 21 (7.81%) SQL Server
6 9 (3.35%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
7 5 (1.86%) Apache Cassandra
7 5 (1.86%) MySQL
8 3 (1.12%) Apache Hive
8 3 (1.12%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.12%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.12%) HBase
9 1 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.37%) GIS
9 1 (0.37%) Oracle Database 10g
9 1 (0.37%) Oracle Database 11g
9 1 (0.37%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.37%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.37%) Redis
Development Applications
1 72 (26.77%) Jenkins
2 46 (17.10%) GitLab
3 36 (13.38%) Git
4 19 (7.06%) Liquibase
5 18 (6.69%) Mockito
6 14 (5.20%) Sonatype Nexus
7 13 (4.83%) JIRA
8 11 (4.09%) Bitbucket Server
8 11 (4.09%) CA Release Automation
9 8 (2.97%) CircleCI
10 7 (2.60%) Jaeger
11 4 (1.49%) Bitbucket
12 3 (1.12%) Rational DOORS
13 2 (0.74%) Gradle
13 2 (0.74%) Maven
13 2 (0.74%) Octopus Deploy
14 1 (0.37%) Artifactory
14 1 (0.37%) Eclipse
14 1 (0.37%) JUnit
14 1 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
General
1 89 (33.09%) Social Skills
2 70 (26.02%) Finance
3 43 (15.99%) Banking
4 31 (11.52%) Public Sector
5 27 (10.04%) Financial Institution
6 21 (7.81%) Analytical Skills
7 19 (7.06%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.60%) Legal
9 4 (1.49%) Games
10 3 (1.12%) Law
11 2 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.74%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.37%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 49 (18.22%) Senior
2 43 (15.99%) Developer
3 31 (11.52%) Java Developer
4 27 (10.04%) Platform Engineer
5 26 (9.67%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (9.67%) Software Engineer
6 21 (7.81%) Lead
7 20 (7.43%) Cloud Engineer
8 19 (7.06%) AWS Engineer
9 16 (5.95%) Senior Developer
9 16 (5.95%) Senior Java Developer
10 15 (5.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 14 (5.20%) GCP Engineer
12 12 (4.46%) IT Engineer
12 12 (4.46%) IT Support
12 12 (4.46%) IT Support Engineer
12 12 (4.46%) Support Engineer
13 10 (3.72%) Administrator
13 10 (3.72%) Cryptography Engineer
13 10 (3.72%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (14.50%) Elastic Stack
2 34 (12.64%) REST
3 28 (10.41%) Kafka
3 28 (10.41%) RESTful
4 18 (6.69%) ActiveMQ
4 18 (6.69%) JAX-RS
5 13 (4.83%) LDAP
5 13 (4.83%) OAuth
6 11 (4.09%) OpenID
6 11 (4.09%) SAML
7 10 (3.72%) FastAPI
7 10 (3.72%) Spring Boot
8 9 (3.35%) Middleware
9 8 (2.97%) Node.js
9 8 (2.97%) OpenTelemetry
10 7 (2.60%) YAML
11 6 (2.23%) Spring
11 6 (2.23%) XMPP
12 5 (1.86%) AngularJS
13 3 (1.12%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 32 (11.90%) Distributed Systems
2 28 (10.41%) Public Cloud
3 26 (9.67%) Cloud Native
4 15 (5.58%) Product Ownership
5 14 (5.20%) Data Centre
6 13 (4.83%) Onboarding
7 9 (3.35%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (2.60%) NHS
9 6 (2.23%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.49%) Cyber Threat
12 3 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.12%) Security Posture
13 2 (0.74%) Derivative
13 2 (0.74%) Enterprise Cloud
13 2 (0.74%) Enterprise Software
13 2 (0.74%) Legacy Applications
13 2 (0.74%) PKI
13 2 (0.74%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 96 (35.69%) Windows
2 57 (21.19%) Unix
3 32 (11.90%) Windows Server
4 31 (11.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (8.18%) Mac OS X
6 8 (2.97%) CentOS
6 8 (2.97%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.49%) Solaris
8 3 (1.12%) Amazon Linux
9 2 (0.74%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.74%) VMS
9 2 (0.74%) zOS
10 1 (0.37%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (44.24%) DevOps
2 118 (43.87%) CI/CD
3 85 (31.60%) Containerisation
4 72 (26.77%) Problem-Solving
5 67 (24.91%) Agile
5 67 (24.91%) Infrastructure as Code
6 65 (24.16%) Microservices
7 55 (20.45%) Cybersecurity
8 49 (18.22%) Observability
9 40 (14.87%) Root Cause Analysis
9 40 (14.87%) Test Automation
10 38 (14.13%) Infrastructure Automation
11 34 (12.64%) Cryptography
11 34 (12.64%) Software Engineering
12 33 (12.27%) Computer Science
13 32 (11.90%) Data Security
13 32 (11.90%) High Availability
14 31 (11.52%) Task Automation
15 30 (11.15%) Platform Engineering
16 29 (10.78%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 142 (52.79%) Python
2 70 (26.02%) Bash
3 68 (25.28%) Java
4 40 (14.87%) PowerShell
5 34 (12.64%) Go
6 27 (10.04%) Shell Script
6 27 (10.04%) SQL
7 22 (8.18%) Perl
8 14 (5.20%) Groovy
9 13 (4.83%) Ruby
10 12 (4.46%) PHP
11 9 (3.35%) Rust
12 6 (2.23%) C++
13 4 (1.49%) C#
14 3 (1.12%) Delphi
14 3 (1.12%) JavaScript
14 3 (1.12%) Search Processing Language
15 2 (0.74%) C
15 2 (0.74%) PL/SQL
16 1 (0.37%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 64 (23.79%) Security Cleared
2 51 (18.96%) SC Cleared
3 35 (13.01%) Degree
4 24 (8.92%) Computer Science Degree
4 24 (8.92%) Master's Degree
5 18 (6.69%) AWS Certification
6 16 (5.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 10 (3.72%) FFIEC
8 8 (2.97%) CCDP
8 8 (2.97%) CCNA
8 8 (2.97%) CCNP
8 8 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (2.60%) RHCE
10 5 (1.86%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 5 (1.86%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 5 (1.86%) CISM
10 5 (1.86%) CISSP
11 4 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
12 3 (1.12%) AWS Certified Developer
13 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.46%) GDPR
2 11 (4.09%) NIST
3 10 (3.72%) GLBA
3 10 (3.72%) PCI DSS
4 6 (2.23%) SLA
5 3 (1.12%) HIPAA
5 3 (1.12%) SOC 2
6 2 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 97 (36.06%) Docker
2 30 (11.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (10.78%) Active Directory
4 10 (3.72%) Oracle RAC
5 9 (3.35%) vSphere
6 8 (2.97%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 6 (2.23%) KVM
8 5 (1.86%) Hyper-V
9 3 (1.12%) HDFS
9 3 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.74%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.37%) Ceph
11 1 (0.37%) Firmware
11 1 (0.37%) NFS
11 1 (0.37%) QEMU
11 1 (0.37%) SRDF
11 1 (0.37%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 1 (0.37%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.37%) Xen
Systems Management
1 106 (39.41%) Kubernetes
2 88 (32.71%) Ansible
3 84 (31.23%) Terraform
4 65 (24.16%) Grafana
5 52 (19.33%) Prometheus
6 13 (4.83%) Progress Chef
6 13 (4.83%) Puppet
7 11 (4.09%) CA Single Sign-On
8 10 (3.72%) CA Wily
8 10 (3.72%) Data Guard
8 10 (3.72%) yum
9 8 (2.97%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (2.97%) Tivoli
10 6 (2.23%) Kiali
10 6 (2.23%) NetBackup
10 6 (2.23%) Oracle RMAN
11 5 (1.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 5 (1.86%) EMC NetWorker
11 5 (1.86%) Packer
12 4 (1.49%) SELinux
Vendors
1 69 (25.65%) Splunk
2 50 (18.59%) Oracle
3 41 (15.24%) Microsoft
4 40 (14.87%) VMware
5 32 (11.90%) Google
6 28 (10.41%) Red Hat
7 20 (7.43%) AppDynamics
8 13 (4.83%) Cisco
9 12 (4.46%) IBM
10 11 (4.09%) Broadcom
11 9 (3.35%) Citrix
11 9 (3.35%) Thales
12 7 (2.60%) CyberArk
12 7 (2.60%) F5
13 6 (2.23%) Veritas
14 5 (1.86%) Palo Alto
15 4 (1.49%) EMC
15 4 (1.49%) Juniper
15 4 (1.49%) ServiceNow
16 3 (1.12%) NetApp