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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 31 40
Rank change year-on-year -19 +9 -1
Contract jobs citing Linux 304 225 174
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.07% 5.61% 4.21%
As % of the Operating Systems category 35.68% 37.44% 32.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 155 120
10th Percentile £358 £324 £375
25th Percentile £411 £368 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £615 £610 £620
90th Percentile £650 £684 £676
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 3
10th Percentile £18.90 - £47.35
25th Percentile £23.36 - £47.88
Median hourly rate £36.67 £70.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -47.61% +33.33% +98.11%
75th Percentile £49.06 - £68.42
90th Percentile £49.63 - £75.72
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 852 601 543
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.42% 14.98% 13.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 568 399 352
10th Percentile £180 £175 £190
25th Percentile £235 £265 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £426 £400 £470
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -14.89% +6.82%
75th Percentile £526 £538 £588
90th Percentile £620 £621 £784
England median daily rate £474 £450 £495
% change year-on-year +5.22% -9.09% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 21 59
10th Percentile £16.21 £13.00 -
25th Percentile £17.07 £14.20 £10.95
Median hourly rate £19.84 £18.00 £15.17
Median % change year-on-year +10.22% +18.66% -30.25%
75th Percentile £27.33 £18.87 £18.97
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.78 £24.18
England median hourly rate £34.68 £23.00 £34.00
% change year-on-year +50.76% -32.35% -14.14%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -10 156 £500 +25.00% 97
Yorkshire -21 128 £500 -4.76% 34
North East -17 27 £490 -14.78% 28
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 (6.58%) Confluence
2 4 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.99%) Apache
3 3 (0.99%) CICS
3 3 (0.99%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.66%) 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 (2.30%) 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%) Odoo
2 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.33%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 112 (36.84%) AWS
2 86 (28.29%) Azure
3 52 (17.11%) GCP
4 31 (10.20%) OpenShift
5 26 (8.55%) GitHub
6 18 (5.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 18 (5.92%) OCI
7 17 (5.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 16 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
9 12 (3.95%) Amazon EKS
10 11 (3.62%) Amazon ECS
10 11 (3.62%) AWS CloudFormation
11 10 (3.29%) GitHub Actions
11 10 (3.29%) Serverless
12 9 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (2.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (2.30%) Azure AKS
14 7 (2.30%) Azure Sentinel
15 6 (1.97%) Entra ID
15 6 (1.97%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 31 (10.20%) Firewall
2 22 (7.24%) SAN
3 17 (5.59%) DNS
4 14 (4.61%) Network Security
5 10 (3.29%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.96%) VSAN
7 6 (1.97%) 3GPP
7 6 (1.97%) RTP
7 6 (1.97%) Wireshark
8 5 (1.64%) iSCSI
8 5 (1.64%) NAS
8 5 (1.64%) VPN
9 4 (1.32%) DHCP
9 4 (1.32%) SSL
10 3 (0.99%) FTP
10 3 (0.99%) HTTP
10 3 (0.99%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.99%) WAN
10 3 (0.99%) Wireless
11 2 (0.66%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.21%) Oracle Database
2 18 (5.92%) RDBMS
2 18 (5.92%) Relational Database
3 15 (4.93%) MongoDB
3 15 (4.93%) Oracle Exadata
4 13 (4.28%) NoSQL
5 11 (3.62%) SQL Server
6 9 (2.96%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (2.63%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (1.97%) Oracle Database 12c
9 5 (1.64%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.64%) Sybase ASE
10 3 (0.99%) Amazon Aurora
10 3 (0.99%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (0.99%) BusinessObjects
10 3 (0.99%) DataStage
10 3 (0.99%) Db2
11 2 (0.66%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.66%) Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.66%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 33 (10.86%) Git
2 30 (9.87%) JIRA
3 27 (8.88%) GitLab
4 22 (7.24%) Jenkins
5 12 (3.95%) Mockito
6 6 (1.97%) TeamCity
7 5 (1.64%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (1.32%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.99%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.66%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.66%) Gatling
10 2 (0.66%) Gradle
10 2 (0.66%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.66%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.66%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.66%) Toad
11 1 (0.33%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.33%) Hudson
11 1 (0.33%) Jaeger
11 1 (0.33%) Liquibase
General
1 64 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 62 (20.39%) Finance
3 33 (10.86%) Banking
4 26 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 21 (6.91%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (3.29%) Legal
7 6 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.64%) Aviation
8 5 (1.64%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.64%) Military
8 5 (1.64%) Police
9 4 (1.32%) Investment Banking
9 4 (1.32%) Law
9 4 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 3 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.66%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.33%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 48 (15.79%) Senior
2 33 (10.86%) Linux Engineer
3 31 (10.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 28 (9.21%) Security Engineer
5 27 (8.88%) Developer
6 22 (7.24%) DevOps Engineer
7 19 (6.25%) Cloud Engineer
8 17 (5.59%) Consultant
9 16 (5.26%) DBA
9 16 (5.26%) Java Developer
9 16 (5.26%) Unix Engineer
10 14 (4.61%) Software Engineer
11 11 (3.62%) Lead
11 11 (3.62%) Security Consultant
12 10 (3.29%) AWS Engineer
12 10 (3.29%) Data Centre Engineer
12 10 (3.29%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.29%) Senior Developer
12 10 (3.29%) Unix Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.96%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (5.26%) Kafka
2 15 (4.93%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 13 (4.28%) .NET
4 12 (3.95%) ActiveMQ
4 12 (3.95%) JAX-RS
5 11 (3.62%) REST
6 10 (3.29%) Redfish
7 9 (2.96%) Middleware
8 8 (2.63%) YAML
9 7 (2.30%) JSON
9 7 (2.30%) LDAP
10 6 (1.97%) .NET Core
10 6 (1.97%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (1.97%) RabbitMQ
11 5 (1.64%) ARM Templates
11 5 (1.64%) XML
12 4 (1.32%) Flash
12 4 (1.32%) Node.js
12 4 (1.32%) OpenID
12 4 (1.32%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 39 (12.83%) Cloud Native
2 31 (10.20%) Data Centre
3 29 (9.54%) Linux Command Line
4 25 (8.22%) Security Posture
5 19 (6.25%) Replication
6 16 (5.26%) PKI
7 15 (4.93%) Management Information System
7 15 (4.93%) Public Cloud
8 14 (4.61%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (4.28%) Hybrid Cloud
10 12 (3.95%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (3.62%) Mainframe
12 10 (3.29%) Cloud Security Posture
12 10 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
13 8 (2.63%) Enterprise Cloud
14 6 (1.97%) Enterprise Storage
15 5 (1.64%) Private Cloud
15 5 (1.64%) Robotics
16 4 (1.32%) EMC VMAX
17 3 (0.99%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 99 (32.57%) Windows
2 76 (25.00%) Unix
3 73 (24.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 32 (10.53%) AIX
5 26 (8.55%) Windows Server
6 22 (7.24%) Solaris
7 10 (3.29%) Ubuntu
8 9 (2.96%) VMS
9 8 (2.63%) Oracle Linux
10 7 (2.30%) CentOS
10 7 (2.30%) Mac OS X
11 5 (1.64%) CoreOS
11 5 (1.64%) HPUX
11 5 (1.64%) SUSE
11 5 (1.64%) zOS
12 3 (0.99%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.66%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.66%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.66%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (33.55%) CI/CD
2 83 (27.30%) Infrastructure as Code
3 82 (26.97%) DevOps
4 68 (22.37%) Agile
5 52 (17.11%) Migration
6 49 (16.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 47 (15.46%) Continuous Improvement
8 46 (15.13%) Observability
9 41 (13.49%) Cloud Security
10 40 (13.16%) High Availability
11 39 (12.83%) Change Management
11 39 (12.83%) Infrastructure Automation
12 36 (11.84%) Test Automation
13 34 (11.18%) Performance Tuning
14 33 (10.86%) Roadmaps
15 32 (10.53%) ITIL
15 32 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
16 30 (9.87%) Runbook
17 29 (9.54%) Platform Engineering
18 28 (9.21%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 117 (38.49%) Python
2 81 (26.64%) Bash
3 72 (23.68%) PowerShell
4 47 (15.46%) Java
4 47 (15.46%) SQL
5 17 (5.59%) Shell Script
6 14 (4.61%) Bicep
7 13 (4.28%) JavaScript
8 12 (3.95%) C#
9 8 (2.63%) Go
10 6 (1.97%) Rust
10 6 (1.97%) TypeScript
11 5 (1.64%) JCL
12 4 (1.32%) Kotlin
13 3 (0.99%) COBOL
13 3 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.66%) C++
14 2 (0.66%) DCL
14 2 (0.66%) Perl
14 2 (0.66%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 57 (18.75%) Security Cleared
2 44 (14.47%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.86%) Degree
4 31 (10.20%) CISSP
5 21 (6.91%) AWS Certification
6 20 (6.58%) Azure Certification
7 9 (2.96%) CompTIA Security+
8 6 (1.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 6 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (1.97%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.97%) RHCE
9 5 (1.64%) CISM
9 5 (1.64%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (1.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 4 (1.32%) OCP
10 4 (1.32%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (0.99%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.99%) MCSE
11 3 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.96%) HIPAA
2 8 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (1.97%) NIST
4 5 (1.64%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 5 (1.64%) GDPR
5 4 (1.32%) GRC
6 3 (0.99%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.99%) QA
6 3 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.99%) SLA
7 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 58 (19.08%) Docker
2 44 (14.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (11.84%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (6.58%) Active Directory
5 18 (5.92%) Oracle RAC
5 18 (5.92%) vSphere
6 17 (5.59%) KVM
7 16 (5.26%) NFS
8 13 (4.28%) VMware ESXi
9 12 (3.95%) Firmware
10 11 (3.62%) Hyper-V
11 8 (2.63%) VMware NSX
12 5 (1.64%) Time Sharing Option
13 4 (1.32%) Ceph
13 4 (1.32%) GPFS
14 3 (0.99%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 2 (0.66%) SRDF
16 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 1 (0.33%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 1 (0.33%) zsh
Systems Management
1 105 (34.54%) Terraform
2 91 (29.93%) Ansible
3 83 (27.30%) Kubernetes
4 23 (7.57%) Oracle RMAN
5 22 (7.24%) Progress Chef
6 20 (6.58%) Prometheus
7 19 (6.25%) Data Guard
7 19 (6.25%) Grafana
8 10 (3.29%) Dell DRAC
9 9 (2.96%) Packer
9 9 (2.96%) vCenter Server
10 8 (2.63%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 7 (2.30%) PowerCLI
11 7 (2.30%) vRealize
12 6 (1.97%) Istio
13 5 (1.64%) Argo
13 5 (1.64%) Puppet
14 4 (1.32%) Oracle ZFS
14 4 (1.32%) Tivoli
15 3 (0.99%) vMotion
Vendors
1 49 (16.12%) Oracle
2 48 (15.79%) VMware
3 44 (14.47%) Red Hat
4 38 (12.50%) Microsoft
5 25 (8.22%) Google
6 23 (7.57%) IBM
7 17 (5.59%) Cisco
8 13 (4.28%) ServiceNow
8 13 (4.28%) Splunk
9 10 (3.29%) Dell
10 9 (2.96%) Broadcom
10 9 (2.96%) Dynatrace
10 9 (2.96%) HP
11 7 (2.30%) CyberArk
12 5 (1.64%) Brocade
12 5 (1.64%) Juniper
12 5 (1.64%) Sybase
12 5 (1.64%) Varonis
13 4 (1.32%) Databricks
13 4 (1.32%) SAP