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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 42 42
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -23
Contract jobs citing Linux 265 158 194
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 5.36% 4.67% 3.98%
As % of the Operating Systems category 36.05% 30.38% 28.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 87 123
10th Percentile £313 £356 £314
25th Percentile £400 £439 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year -12.36% +10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £550 £638 £588
90th Percentile £688 £750 £623
England median daily rate £510 £560 £550
% change year-on-year -8.93% +1.82% -6.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 11
10th Percentile - £43.10 -
25th Percentile - £47.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £63.79 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year -34.25% +45.79% -2.78%
75th Percentile - £80.59 £55.31
90th Percentile £61.33 £83.70 £63.75
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -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 735 520 680
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 14.87% 15.36% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 527 305 452
10th Percentile £135 £163 £163
25th Percentile £186 £223 £248
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £375 £400 £415
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% -3.61% -3.04%
75th Percentile £500 £564 £518
90th Percentile £602 £639 £588
England median daily rate £450 £475 £470
% change year-on-year -5.26% +1.06% -8.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 21 50
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £15.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £16.25 £16.94
Median hourly rate £22.50 £18.75 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -10.71% -16.00%
75th Percentile £41.94 £29.00 £38.64
90th Percentile £68.70 £68.18 £65.88
England median hourly rate £23.79 £53.00 £29.50
% change year-on-year -55.12% +79.66% +14.74%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +1 165 £500 -14.16% 85
North West -22 94 £453 -17.64% 92
North East -15 12 £550 +8.64% 39
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 (7.55%) Apache
2 13 (4.91%) JBoss
2 13 (4.91%) WebSphere
3 11 (4.15%) IIS
3 11 (4.15%) TPMS
3 11 (4.15%) WebSphere Application Server
4 10 (3.77%) iPlanet
5 7 (2.64%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (2.26%) OpenStack
6 6 (2.26%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.51%) Tomcat
8 3 (1.13%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (1.13%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.75%) CICS
10 1 (0.38%) CMS
10 1 (0.38%) Confluence
10 1 (0.38%) Documentum
10 1 (0.38%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 11 (4.15%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.38%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 98 (36.98%) AWS
2 61 (23.02%) GCP
3 42 (15.85%) Azure
4 35 (13.21%) Serverless
5 33 (12.45%) OpenShift
6 26 (9.81%) GitHub
7 17 (6.42%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (5.28%) AWS CloudFormation
9 12 (4.53%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (4.15%) Google Workspace
11 9 (3.40%) AWS KMS
11 9 (3.40%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (3.40%) Entra ID
12 8 (3.02%) IaaS
12 8 (3.02%) PaaS
12 8 (3.02%) SaaS
13 7 (2.64%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (2.64%) Amazon S3
13 7 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 4 (1.51%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 70 (26.42%) Firewall
2 18 (6.79%) Network Security
3 15 (5.66%) SNMP
3 15 (5.66%) SSL
4 13 (4.91%) TCP/IP
5 12 (4.53%) DNS
6 11 (4.15%) SSH
7 10 (3.77%) Kerberos
8 8 (3.02%) VPN
9 7 (2.64%) VLAN
10 6 (2.26%) BGP
10 6 (2.26%) Software-Defined Networking
10 6 (2.26%) WebEx
11 4 (1.51%) HTTP
12 3 (1.13%) DHCP
13 2 (0.75%) HTTPS
13 2 (0.75%) VSAN
14 1 (0.38%) FCoE
14 1 (0.38%) Multicast
14 1 (0.38%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (12.45%) NoSQL
2 31 (11.70%) PostgreSQL
3 22 (8.30%) MongoDB
4 20 (7.55%) Oracle Database
5 17 (6.42%) SQL Server
6 9 (3.40%) Relational Database
7 5 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
7 5 (1.89%) Apache Cassandra
7 5 (1.89%) MySQL
8 3 (1.13%) Apache Hive
8 3 (1.13%) DynamoDB
8 3 (1.13%) Hadoop
8 3 (1.13%) HBase
9 1 (0.38%) DocumentDB
9 1 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.38%) GIS
9 1 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.38%) Redis
Development Applications
1 70 (26.42%) Jenkins
2 46 (17.36%) GitLab
3 31 (11.70%) Git
4 18 (6.79%) Liquibase
4 18 (6.79%) Mockito
5 14 (5.28%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (4.15%) Bitbucket Server
6 11 (4.15%) CA Release Automation
6 11 (4.15%) JIRA
7 8 (3.02%) CircleCI
7 8 (3.02%) Jaeger
8 4 (1.51%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.75%) Gradle
9 2 (0.75%) Maven
9 2 (0.75%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.38%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.38%) JUnit
10 1 (0.38%) Rational DOORS
General
1 84 (31.70%) Social Skills
2 71 (26.79%) Finance
3 41 (15.47%) Banking
4 31 (11.70%) Public Sector
5 28 (10.57%) Financial Institution
6 22 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
7 21 (7.92%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.64%) Legal
9 4 (1.51%) Games
10 3 (1.13%) Law
11 2 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.75%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.38%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.38%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 50 (18.87%) Senior
2 42 (15.85%) Developer
3 30 (11.32%) Java Developer
4 28 (10.57%) DevOps Engineer
5 27 (10.19%) Platform Engineer
6 23 (8.68%) Software Engineer
7 21 (7.92%) Lead
8 19 (7.17%) AWS Engineer
8 19 (7.17%) Cloud Engineer
9 16 (6.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (6.04%) Senior Developer
9 16 (6.04%) Senior Java Developer
10 13 (4.91%) GCP Engineer
11 12 (4.53%) IT Engineer
11 12 (4.53%) IT Support
11 12 (4.53%) IT Support Engineer
11 12 (4.53%) Support Engineer
12 11 (4.15%) Administrator
12 11 (4.15%) Cryptography Engineer
13 10 (3.77%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (14.34%) Elastic Stack
2 33 (12.45%) REST
3 29 (10.94%) Kafka
4 27 (10.19%) RESTful
5 18 (6.79%) ActiveMQ
5 18 (6.79%) JAX-RS
6 13 (4.91%) OAuth
7 12 (4.53%) LDAP
8 11 (4.15%) OpenID
8 11 (4.15%) SAML
8 11 (4.15%) Spring Boot
9 10 (3.77%) Middleware
10 9 (3.40%) Node.js
10 9 (3.40%) OpenTelemetry
11 8 (3.02%) YAML
12 6 (2.26%) FastAPI
12 6 (2.26%) Spring
12 6 (2.26%) XMPP
13 5 (1.89%) AngularJS
14 3 (1.13%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 32 (12.08%) Distributed Systems
2 27 (10.19%) Public Cloud
3 26 (9.81%) Cloud Native
4 15 (5.66%) Data Centre
4 15 (5.66%) Product Ownership
5 14 (5.28%) Onboarding
6 9 (3.40%) Hybrid Cloud
7 7 (2.64%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.64%) NHS
8 5 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (1.51%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (1.13%) Security Posture
11 2 (0.75%) Derivative
11 2 (0.75%) Enterprise Cloud
11 2 (0.75%) Enterprise Software
11 2 (0.75%) Legacy Applications
11 2 (0.75%) PKI
11 2 (0.75%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 98 (36.98%) Windows
2 57 (21.51%) Unix
3 33 (12.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 32 (12.08%) Windows Server
5 22 (8.30%) Mac OS X
6 9 (3.40%) CentOS
6 9 (3.40%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.51%) Solaris
8 3 (1.13%) Amazon Linux
9 2 (0.75%) Mac OS
9 2 (0.75%) VMS
9 2 (0.75%) zOS
10 1 (0.38%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (44.53%) CI/CD
2 116 (43.77%) DevOps
3 83 (31.32%) Containerisation
4 70 (26.42%) Problem-Solving
5 65 (24.53%) Infrastructure as Code
5 65 (24.53%) Microservices
6 60 (22.64%) Agile
7 57 (21.51%) Cybersecurity
8 51 (19.25%) Observability
9 40 (15.09%) Root Cause Analysis
9 40 (15.09%) Test Automation
10 39 (14.72%) Infrastructure Automation
11 34 (12.83%) Cryptography
12 33 (12.45%) Computer Science
12 33 (12.45%) Data Security
13 32 (12.08%) High Availability
14 31 (11.70%) Software Engineering
15 29 (10.94%) Platform Engineering
16 28 (10.57%) Continuous Integration
17 27 (10.19%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 135 (50.94%) Python
2 68 (25.66%) Bash
3 65 (24.53%) Java
4 40 (15.09%) PowerShell
5 33 (12.45%) Go
6 27 (10.19%) SQL
7 23 (8.68%) Perl
7 23 (8.68%) Shell Script
8 14 (5.28%) Groovy
8 14 (5.28%) Ruby
9 12 (4.53%) PHP
10 10 (3.77%) Rust
11 4 (1.51%) C#
12 3 (1.13%) C++
12 3 (1.13%) Delphi
12 3 (1.13%) Search Processing Language
13 2 (0.75%) C
13 2 (0.75%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.75%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.38%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 64 (24.15%) Security Cleared
2 51 (19.25%) SC Cleared
3 35 (13.21%) Degree
4 23 (8.68%) Computer Science Degree
4 23 (8.68%) Master's Degree
5 17 (6.42%) AWS Certification
6 16 (6.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 11 (4.15%) FFIEC
8 8 (3.02%) CCDP
8 8 (3.02%) CCNA
8 8 (3.02%) CCNP
8 8 (3.02%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (3.02%) RHCE
9 5 (1.89%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 5 (1.89%) CISM
9 5 (1.89%) CISSP
10 4 (1.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (1.51%) CompTIA Security+
11 3 (1.13%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.91%) GDPR
2 11 (4.15%) GLBA
2 11 (4.15%) NIST
2 11 (4.15%) PCI DSS
3 6 (2.26%) SLA
4 3 (1.13%) HIPAA
4 3 (1.13%) SOC 2
5 2 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 97 (36.60%) Docker
2 30 (11.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (10.94%) Active Directory
4 9 (3.40%) vSphere
5 8 (3.02%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 6 (2.26%) KVM
6 6 (2.26%) Oracle RAC
7 5 (1.89%) Hyper-V
8 3 (1.13%) HDFS
8 3 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.75%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.38%) Ceph
10 1 (0.38%) Firmware
10 1 (0.38%) NFS
10 1 (0.38%) QEMU
10 1 (0.38%) SRDF
10 1 (0.38%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.38%) Xen
Systems Management
1 105 (39.62%) Kubernetes
2 84 (31.70%) Terraform
3 83 (31.32%) Ansible
4 65 (24.53%) Grafana
5 52 (19.62%) Prometheus
6 14 (5.28%) Puppet
7 13 (4.91%) Progress Chef
8 11 (4.15%) CA Single Sign-On
9 10 (3.77%) CA Wily
10 8 (3.02%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (3.02%) Tivoli
11 7 (2.64%) Kiali
12 6 (2.26%) Data Guard
12 6 (2.26%) NetBackup
12 6 (2.26%) Oracle RMAN
12 6 (2.26%) yum
13 5 (1.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 5 (1.89%) EMC NetWorker
13 5 (1.89%) Packer
14 4 (1.51%) SCCM
Vendors
1 69 (26.04%) Splunk
2 45 (16.98%) Oracle
3 40 (15.09%) Microsoft
3 40 (15.09%) VMware
4 31 (11.70%) Google
5 28 (10.57%) Red Hat
6 20 (7.55%) AppDynamics
7 13 (4.91%) Cisco
8 12 (4.53%) IBM
9 11 (4.15%) Broadcom
10 10 (3.77%) Thales
11 9 (3.40%) Citrix
12 7 (2.64%) CyberArk
12 7 (2.64%) F5
13 6 (2.26%) Veritas
14 5 (1.89%) Palo Alto
15 4 (1.51%) EMC
15 4 (1.51%) Juniper
15 4 (1.51%) ServiceNow
16 3 (1.13%) NetApp