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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 37 34 41
Rank change year-on-year -3 +7 -20
Contract jobs citing Linux 301 176 197
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 5.73% 5.33% 4.00%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.74% 32.18% 27.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 103 121
10th Percentile £327 £344 £313
25th Percentile £400 £396 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £550 £495
Median % change year-on-year -13.09% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £624 £582
90th Percentile £688 £738 £623
England median daily rate £512 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.95% - -6.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 5 12
10th Percentile - £43.10 -
25th Percentile - £47.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £63.79 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.25% +32.89% +7.05%
75th Percentile £66.18 £80.59 £51.94
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £63.75
England median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £61.92
% change year-on-year -5.06% +7.40% -4.74%

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 777 547 722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 14.79% 16.55% 14.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 541 333 476
10th Percentile £142 £171 £160
25th Percentile £190 £235 £230
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £388 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year -3.13% - -11.11%
75th Percentile £500 £538 £500
90th Percentile £625 £635 £586
England median daily rate £450 £470 £453
% change year-on-year -4.26% +3.75% -12.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 22 61
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £15.50
25th Percentile £17.75 £16.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £21.98 £18.13 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.27% +0.69% -30.77%
75th Percentile £41.94 £27.80 £25.25
90th Percentile £68.05 £66.46 £63.75
England median hourly rate £22.50 £41.00 £25.25
% change year-on-year -45.12% +62.38% -4.72%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 0 174 £495 -13.91% 39
North West -11 119 £469 -6.20% 88
North East -16 13 £550 +16.83% 22
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 16 (5.32%) Apache
2 11 (3.65%) TPMS
3 9 (2.99%) JBoss
4 7 (2.33%) IIS
4 7 (2.33%) iPlanet
4 7 (2.33%) WebSphere
4 7 (2.33%) WebSphere Application Server
5 6 (1.99%) CICS
5 6 (1.99%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (1.99%) SharePoint
6 5 (1.66%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (1.00%) Apache Spark
7 3 (1.00%) nginx
8 2 (0.66%) Confluence
9 1 (0.33%) CMS
9 1 (0.33%) Documentum
9 1 (0.33%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.33%) Tomcat
Applications
1 11 (3.65%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.33%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 97 (32.23%) AWS
2 58 (19.27%) GCP
3 41 (13.62%) Azure
4 37 (12.29%) OpenShift
5 33 (10.96%) Serverless
6 28 (9.30%) GitHub
7 14 (4.65%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (4.32%) Amazon EC2
8 13 (4.32%) AWS CloudFormation
9 11 (3.65%) Google Workspace
10 10 (3.32%) Entra ID
11 9 (2.99%) AWS KMS
11 9 (2.99%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (2.99%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 8 (2.66%) Amazon S3
13 7 (2.33%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (2.33%) SaaS
14 6 (1.99%) Amazon EKS
14 6 (1.99%) IaaS
14 6 (1.99%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 82 (27.24%) Firewall
2 21 (6.98%) Network Security
3 19 (6.31%) DNS
3 19 (6.31%) SSL
4 18 (5.98%) TCP/IP
5 15 (4.98%) SNMP
6 11 (3.65%) SSH
6 11 (3.65%) VPN
7 9 (2.99%) VLAN
8 8 (2.66%) Kerberos
9 7 (2.33%) BGP
10 6 (1.99%) SAN
10 6 (1.99%) Software-Defined Networking
10 6 (1.99%) WebEx
11 4 (1.33%) DHCP
11 4 (1.33%) HTTP
11 4 (1.33%) NAS
12 2 (0.66%) HTTPS
12 2 (0.66%) Reverse Proxy
12 2 (0.66%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (10.63%) PostgreSQL
2 30 (9.97%) NoSQL
3 26 (8.64%) MongoDB
4 16 (5.32%) SQL Server
5 13 (4.32%) Oracle Database
6 7 (2.33%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.99%) DataStage
7 6 (1.99%) DB2
7 6 (1.99%) Elasticsearch
8 5 (1.66%) Amazon RDS
8 5 (1.66%) Apache Cassandra
8 5 (1.66%) MySQL
9 3 (1.00%) Apache Hive
9 3 (1.00%) DynamoDB
9 3 (1.00%) Hadoop
9 3 (1.00%) HBase
10 1 (0.33%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.33%) GIS
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
10 1 (0.33%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 70 (23.26%) Jenkins
2 53 (17.61%) GitLab
3 24 (7.97%) Git
4 20 (6.64%) Mockito
5 17 (5.65%) Liquibase
6 14 (4.65%) JIRA
7 11 (3.65%) Sonatype Nexus
8 9 (2.99%) Jaeger
9 7 (2.33%) Bitbucket Server
9 7 (2.33%) CA Release Automation
10 6 (1.99%) CircleCI
11 4 (1.33%) Bitbucket
12 2 (0.66%) Gradle
12 2 (0.66%) Maven
12 2 (0.66%) Octopus Deploy
13 1 (0.33%) Artifactory
13 1 (0.33%) JUnit
General
1 92 (30.56%) Social Skills
2 79 (26.25%) Finance
3 43 (14.29%) Banking
4 40 (13.29%) Public Sector
5 27 (8.97%) Financial Institution
6 23 (7.64%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (7.31%) Analytical Skills
8 8 (2.66%) Legal
9 7 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.00%) Games
11 3 (1.00%) Law
12 2 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.66%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.33%) Advertising
13 1 (0.33%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.33%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.33%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 54 (17.94%) Senior
2 47 (15.61%) Developer
3 34 (11.30%) Java Developer
4 30 (9.97%) Platform Engineer
5 29 (9.63%) DevOps Engineer
5 29 (9.63%) Software Engineer
6 20 (6.64%) Cloud Engineer
6 20 (6.64%) Lead
7 19 (6.31%) AWS Engineer
8 17 (5.65%) Senior Developer
8 17 (5.65%) Senior Java Developer
9 16 (5.32%) GCP Engineer
9 16 (5.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (3.99%) Administrator
11 11 (3.65%) Cryptography Engineer
11 11 (3.65%) IT Engineer
11 11 (3.65%) IT Support
11 11 (3.65%) IT Support Engineer
11 11 (3.65%) Senior Software Engineer
11 11 (3.65%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (11.96%) Elastic Stack
2 34 (11.30%) REST
3 32 (10.63%) Kafka
4 25 (8.31%) RESTful
5 20 (6.64%) JAX-RS
6 19 (6.31%) ActiveMQ
7 15 (4.98%) Middleware
8 13 (4.32%) LDAP
8 13 (4.32%) OpenTelemetry
9 12 (3.99%) Spring Boot
10 9 (2.99%) OAuth
10 9 (2.99%) YAML
11 7 (2.33%) OpenID
11 7 (2.33%) SAML
12 6 (1.99%) Spring
12 6 (1.99%) XMPP
13 5 (1.66%) Node.js
14 3 (1.00%) Spark Streaming
14 3 (1.00%) Spring Batch
14 3 (1.00%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 35 (11.63%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (8.64%) Cloud Native
2 26 (8.64%) Data Centre
2 26 (8.64%) Public Cloud
3 17 (5.65%) Product Ownership
4 13 (4.32%) Onboarding
5 12 (3.99%) Hybrid Cloud
6 8 (2.66%) Security Posture
7 7 (2.33%) Management Information System
8 6 (1.99%) BYOD
8 6 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.99%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (1.99%) Mainframe
8 6 (1.99%) VSAM
9 5 (1.66%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.66%) NHS
10 4 (1.33%) Cyber Threat
11 3 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (1.00%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 110 (36.54%) Windows
2 80 (26.58%) Unix
3 41 (13.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 36 (11.96%) Windows Server
5 26 (8.64%) Mac OS X
6 12 (3.99%) AIX
7 9 (2.99%) CentOS
7 9 (2.99%) Ubuntu
8 8 (2.66%) Solaris
9 5 (1.66%) VMS
10 3 (1.00%) Amazon Linux
10 3 (1.00%) Mac OS
11 2 (0.66%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.66%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (40.86%) CI/CD
2 120 (39.87%) DevOps
3 82 (27.24%) Containerisation
4 76 (25.25%) Problem-Solving
5 72 (23.92%) Microservices
6 68 (22.59%) Infrastructure as Code
7 59 (19.60%) Agile
7 59 (19.60%) Cybersecurity
8 51 (16.94%) Observability
9 46 (15.28%) Test Automation
10 42 (13.95%) Root Cause Analysis
11 41 (13.62%) Infrastructure Automation
12 36 (11.96%) Software Engineering
13 35 (11.63%) Computer Science
13 35 (11.63%) Cryptography
13 35 (11.63%) Platform Engineering
14 33 (10.96%) Data Security
15 32 (10.63%) High Availability
16 31 (10.30%) TDD
17 29 (9.63%) BDD
Programming Languages
1 143 (47.51%) Python
2 77 (25.58%) Bash
3 69 (22.92%) Java
4 52 (17.28%) PowerShell
5 35 (11.63%) Go
6 34 (11.30%) SQL
7 24 (7.97%) Perl
8 18 (5.98%) Shell Script
9 16 (5.32%) Rust
10 15 (4.98%) Ruby
11 10 (3.32%) Groovy
12 9 (2.99%) PHP
13 8 (2.66%) JavaScript
14 7 (2.33%) TypeScript
15 6 (1.99%) COBOL
16 4 (1.33%) C#
17 3 (1.00%) Delphi
17 3 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
18 2 (0.66%) C
19 1 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 72 (23.92%) Security Cleared
2 54 (17.94%) SC Cleared
3 38 (12.62%) Degree
4 23 (7.64%) Computer Science Degree
4 23 (7.64%) Master's Degree
5 19 (6.31%) AWS Certification
6 16 (5.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (3.99%) CISSP
8 11 (3.65%) FFIEC
9 10 (3.32%) CCNA
9 10 (3.32%) CCNP
9 10 (3.32%) Cisco Certification
9 10 (3.32%) CompTIA Security+
10 9 (2.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 9 (2.99%) CCDP
10 9 (2.99%) RHCE
11 7 (2.33%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (1.99%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 6 (1.99%) CISM
13 5 (1.66%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.32%) GDPR
2 11 (3.65%) GLBA
2 11 (3.65%) NIST
2 11 (3.65%) PCI DSS
3 7 (2.33%) SLA
4 3 (1.00%) HIPAA
4 3 (1.00%) SOC 2
5 2 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.33%) GxP
6 1 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 95 (31.56%) Docker
2 38 (12.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (9.97%) Active Directory
4 19 (6.31%) Virtual Machines
5 14 (4.65%) KVM
6 12 (3.99%) Hyper-V
6 12 (3.99%) vSphere
7 6 (1.99%) Tivoli Directory Server
8 4 (1.33%) Firmware
9 3 (1.00%) HDFS
9 3 (1.00%) NFS
9 3 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.33%) Ceph
11 1 (0.33%) QEMU
11 1 (0.33%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 108 (35.88%) Kubernetes
2 95 (31.56%) Terraform
3 89 (29.57%) Ansible
4 61 (20.27%) Grafana
5 52 (17.28%) Prometheus
6 13 (4.32%) Puppet
7 10 (3.32%) Progress Chef
8 9 (2.99%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (2.66%) CA Single Sign-On
9 8 (2.66%) Kiali
9 8 (2.66%) vCenter Server
10 7 (2.33%) CA Wily
10 7 (2.33%) NetBackup
11 6 (1.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (1.99%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.99%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (1.99%) Tivoli
12 5 (1.66%) CASB
12 5 (1.66%) EMC NetWorker
12 5 (1.66%) Nessus
Vendors
1 71 (23.59%) Splunk
2 52 (17.28%) VMware
3 39 (12.96%) Microsoft
4 36 (11.96%) Red Hat
5 34 (11.30%) Google
6 32 (10.63%) Oracle
7 20 (6.64%) IBM
8 13 (4.32%) AppDynamics
9 12 (3.99%) Cisco
9 12 (3.99%) CyberArk
10 10 (3.32%) Citrix
10 10 (3.32%) Thales
11 7 (2.33%) Broadcom
12 6 (1.99%) Remedy
12 6 (1.99%) Veritas
13 5 (1.66%) F5
13 5 (1.66%) Palo Alto
13 5 (1.66%) ServiceNow
13 5 (1.66%) Tenable
14 4 (1.33%) NetApp