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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 30 41
Rank change year-on-year -15 +11 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 308 231 200
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.29% 6.04% 4.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.36% 38.76% 29.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 161 135
10th Percentile £358 £339 £354
25th Percentile £400 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.90% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £590 £588 £616
90th Percentile £650 £650 £656
England median daily rate £518 £538 £540
% change year-on-year -3.72% -0.46% -7.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 8
10th Percentile £25.03 - £47.70
25th Percentile £38.67 - £48.00
Median hourly rate £48.75 £70.00 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.36% +44.33% +115.56%
75th Percentile £56.07 - £58.44
90th Percentile £66.98 - £69.68
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 803 596 681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.18% 15.57% 14.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 530 392 442
10th Percentile £166 £181 £178
25th Percentile £258 £267 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £428
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -6.43% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £564
90th Percentile £625 £614 £688
England median daily rate £460 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 20 87
10th Percentile £16.58 £13.00 £10.95
25th Percentile £17.25 £13.90 £11.01
Median hourly rate £22.80 £17.47 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.51% +9.19% -27.27%
75th Percentile £48.75 £18.87 £20.75
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.75 £30.25
England median hourly rate £32.50 £22.53 £24.68
% change year-on-year +44.25% -8.70% -41.94%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -21 149 £480 +19.40% 89
Yorkshire -23 143 £500 -4.76% 28
North East -19 21 £413 -13.61% 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 21 (6.82%) Confluence
2 9 (2.92%) CICS
3 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.97%) nginx
4 2 (0.65%) Apache
4 2 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.65%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.65%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.32%) CMS
5 1 (0.32%) TPMS
Applications
1 7 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.65%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.32%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.32%) Odoo
2 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.32%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 97 (31.49%) AWS
2 67 (21.75%) Azure
3 43 (13.96%) GCP
4 40 (12.99%) OpenShift
5 25 (8.12%) GitHub
6 17 (5.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 13 (4.22%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 13 (4.22%) OCI
8 8 (2.60%) Amazon EC2
8 8 (2.60%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (2.60%) Amazon S3
9 7 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
9 7 (2.27%) Serverless
10 6 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.62%) Amazon SQS
11 5 (1.62%) IaaS
11 5 (1.62%) Microsoft 365
12 4 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 4 (1.30%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (13.31%) Firewall
2 25 (8.12%) SAN
3 17 (5.52%) DNS
4 13 (4.22%) Network Security
5 11 (3.57%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.92%) VSAN
7 7 (2.27%) NAS
7 7 (2.27%) SSL
8 6 (1.95%) 3GPP
8 6 (1.95%) RTP
8 6 (1.95%) VPN
8 6 (1.95%) Wireshark
9 4 (1.30%) iSCSI
10 3 (0.97%) FTP
10 3 (0.97%) Wireless
11 2 (0.65%) BIG-IP
11 2 (0.65%) Intrusion Detection
11 2 (0.65%) Reverse Proxy
11 2 (0.65%) SNMP
11 2 (0.65%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.79%) Oracle Database
2 18 (5.84%) MongoDB
3 16 (5.19%) Relational Database
4 15 (4.87%) RDBMS
5 12 (3.90%) NoSQL
5 12 (3.90%) Oracle Exadata
5 12 (3.90%) SQL Server
6 10 (3.25%) PostgreSQL
7 9 (2.92%) DataStage
8 8 (2.60%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (1.95%) Db2
10 5 (1.62%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.62%) Sybase ASE
11 4 (1.30%) Oracle Database 12c
12 3 (0.97%) Amazon Aurora
12 3 (0.97%) BusinessObjects
13 2 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
13 2 (0.65%) Apache Cassandra
13 2 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
13 2 (0.65%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 34 (11.04%) JIRA
2 33 (10.71%) GitLab
3 31 (10.06%) Jenkins
4 27 (8.77%) Git
5 13 (4.22%) Mockito
6 6 (1.95%) TeamCity
7 3 (0.97%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.97%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.97%) Jaeger
7 3 (0.97%) Liquibase
7 3 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
8 2 (0.65%) Burp Suite
8 2 (0.65%) Gatling
8 2 (0.65%) Gradle
8 2 (0.65%) LoadRunner
8 2 (0.65%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.32%) Hudson
General
1 69 (22.40%) Social Skills
2 67 (21.75%) Finance
3 33 (10.71%) Banking
3 33 (10.71%) Public Sector
4 20 (6.49%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
6 8 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 7 (2.27%) Legal
8 6 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.62%) Aviation
9 5 (1.62%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.62%) Police
10 4 (1.30%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.30%) Military
11 3 (0.97%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.97%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.65%) Advertising
13 1 (0.32%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.32%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 43 (13.96%) Senior
2 33 (10.71%) Developer
3 27 (8.77%) DevOps Engineer
3 27 (8.77%) Linux Engineer
4 25 (8.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 21 (6.82%) Java Developer
6 20 (6.49%) Security Engineer
7 17 (5.52%) Consultant
7 17 (5.52%) Software Engineer
8 14 (4.55%) DBA
9 12 (3.90%) Cloud Engineer
9 12 (3.90%) Data Centre Engineer
9 12 (3.90%) Platform Engineer
10 11 (3.57%) Security Consultant
10 11 (3.57%) Senior Developer
10 11 (3.57%) Unix Engineer
11 10 (3.25%) Analyst
11 10 (3.25%) Senior Java Developer
12 9 (2.92%) Designer
12 9 (2.92%) Infrastructure Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (5.52%) Kafka
1 17 (5.52%) Middleware
2 13 (4.22%) JAX-RS
3 12 (3.90%) ActiveMQ
3 12 (3.90%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 12 (3.90%) REST
4 11 (3.57%) LDAP
5 10 (3.25%) Redfish
6 9 (2.92%) .NET
7 8 (2.60%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (1.95%) .NET Core
8 6 (1.95%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (1.95%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (1.95%) YAML
9 5 (1.62%) XML
10 4 (1.30%) Flash
10 4 (1.30%) JSON
10 4 (1.30%) Node.js
10 4 (1.30%) Spring Boot
11 3 (0.97%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 38 (12.34%) Data Centre
2 32 (10.39%) Cloud Native
3 30 (9.74%) Linux Command Line
4 24 (7.79%) Security Posture
5 17 (5.52%) Replication
6 16 (5.19%) Mainframe
7 15 (4.87%) Legacy Systems
7 15 (4.87%) Public Cloud
8 13 (4.22%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (4.22%) Management Information System
9 12 (3.90%) Hybrid Cloud
10 11 (3.57%) PKI
11 10 (3.25%) Cloud Security Posture
11 10 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
12 9 (2.92%) BYOD
12 9 (2.92%) VSAM
13 7 (2.27%) Enterprise Storage
14 5 (1.62%) FlexPod
14 5 (1.62%) Onboarding
14 5 (1.62%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 105 (34.09%) Windows
2 81 (26.30%) Unix
3 71 (23.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 38 (12.34%) AIX
5 25 (8.12%) Windows Server
6 23 (7.47%) Solaris
7 13 (4.22%) Mac OS X
8 12 (3.90%) VMS
9 9 (2.92%) Ubuntu
10 8 (2.60%) Oracle Linux
11 7 (2.27%) CentOS
11 7 (2.27%) CoreOS
12 5 (1.62%) Data ONTAP
12 5 (1.62%) HPUX
12 5 (1.62%) SUSE
12 5 (1.62%) zOS
13 3 (0.97%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.65%) OpenVMS
15 1 (0.32%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (29.22%) CI/CD
2 83 (26.95%) DevOps
3 62 (20.13%) Agile
4 57 (18.51%) Infrastructure as Code
5 53 (17.21%) Migration
6 43 (13.96%) Problem-Solving
7 39 (12.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 38 (12.34%) Test Automation
9 36 (11.69%) Observability
10 34 (11.04%) Performance Tuning
10 34 (11.04%) Roadmaps
11 33 (10.71%) Change Management
12 32 (10.39%) Containerisation
12 32 (10.39%) Continuous Improvement
12 32 (10.39%) Microservices
13 31 (10.06%) Cloud Security
13 31 (10.06%) Infrastructure Automation
14 30 (9.74%) ITIL
15 27 (8.77%) High Availability
16 26 (8.44%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 114 (37.01%) Python
2 67 (21.75%) Bash
3 60 (19.48%) PowerShell
4 47 (15.26%) Java
4 47 (15.26%) SQL
5 17 (5.52%) Shell Script
6 14 (4.55%) JavaScript
7 11 (3.57%) Go
8 9 (2.92%) C#
8 9 (2.92%) COBOL
8 9 (2.92%) Rust
9 8 (2.60%) TypeScript
10 5 (1.62%) JCL
11 4 (1.30%) Bicep
11 4 (1.30%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.30%) Perl
12 2 (0.65%) DCL
12 2 (0.65%) REXX
12 2 (0.65%) Ruby
12 2 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 51 (16.56%) Security Cleared
2 34 (11.04%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.71%) Degree
4 30 (9.74%) CISSP
5 18 (5.84%) AWS Certification
6 13 (4.22%) Azure Certification
6 13 (4.22%) CompTIA Security+
7 8 (2.60%) RHCE
8 7 (2.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 7 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (2.27%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.95%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (1.95%) OCP
9 6 (1.95%) Oracle Certification
10 5 (1.62%) MCSA
10 5 (1.62%) MCSE
11 4 (1.30%) CISM
12 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.92%) HIPAA
2 6 (1.95%) GDPR
2 6 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (1.95%) NIST
3 5 (1.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 4 (1.30%) GRC
4 4 (1.30%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.97%) QA
5 3 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.97%) SLA
6 1 (0.32%) GLBA
6 1 (0.32%) GxP
6 1 (0.32%) SOC 2
System Software
1 59 (19.16%) Docker
2 48 (15.58%) Virtual Machines
2 48 (15.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (6.82%) KVM
4 19 (6.17%) NFS
4 19 (6.17%) vSphere
5 17 (5.52%) Active Directory
6 15 (4.87%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.55%) Firmware
8 13 (4.22%) Oracle RAC
9 12 (3.90%) VMware ESXi
10 7 (2.27%) VMware NSX
11 5 (1.62%) Time Sharing Option
12 4 (1.30%) GPFS
13 3 (0.97%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 2 (0.65%) SRDF
15 1 (0.32%) Ceph
15 1 (0.32%) Embedded Firmware
15 1 (0.32%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 1 (0.32%) zsh
Systems Management
1 91 (29.55%) Ansible
2 87 (28.25%) Terraform
3 75 (24.35%) Kubernetes
4 21 (6.82%) Prometheus
5 20 (6.49%) Grafana
6 18 (5.84%) Oracle RMAN
7 17 (5.52%) Progress Chef
8 14 (4.55%) Data Guard
9 11 (3.57%) vCenter Server
10 10 (3.25%) Dell DRAC
11 8 (2.60%) Packer
11 8 (2.60%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 7 (2.27%) PowerCLI
12 7 (2.27%) vRealize
13 6 (1.95%) IBM BigFix
13 6 (1.95%) Nessus
14 5 (1.62%) CASB
14 5 (1.62%) Puppet
14 5 (1.62%) SnapMirror
15 4 (1.30%) Argo
Vendors
1 56 (18.18%) VMware
2 45 (14.61%) Red Hat
3 43 (13.96%) Oracle
4 31 (10.06%) IBM
5 30 (9.74%) Microsoft
6 24 (7.79%) Google
7 18 (5.84%) Splunk
8 13 (4.22%) Cisco
9 12 (3.90%) ServiceNow
10 10 (3.25%) CyberArk
11 9 (2.92%) Broadcom
11 9 (2.92%) Dell
11 9 (2.92%) HP
12 8 (2.60%) Dynatrace
13 7 (2.27%) Tenable
14 6 (1.95%) NetApp
14 6 (1.95%) Remedy
15 5 (1.62%) Brocade
15 5 (1.62%) Sybase
15 5 (1.62%) Varonis