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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 41 50
Rank change year-on-year -15 +9 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 284 228 152
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 3.73% 5.67% 3.67%
As % of the Operating Systems category 32.46% 36.48% 28.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 160 98
10th Percentile £358 £316 £360
25th Percentile £418 £368 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £476 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.15% -13.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £624 £611 £622
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £540
% change year-on-year - -2.78% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 4
10th Percentile £18.90 £44.75 -
25th Percentile £23.36 £48.96 £47.00
Median hourly rate £36.48 £55.97 £50.75
Median % change year-on-year -34.82% +10.29% +125.56%
75th Percentile £47.53 £62.99 £62.33
90th Percentile £48.26 £67.19 £73.29
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 875 625 525
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.50% 15.55% 12.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 579 428 321
10th Percentile £185 £163 £178
25th Percentile £253 £250 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £435 £400 £450
Median % change year-on-year +8.75% -11.11% +5.88%
75th Percentile £525 £525 £578
90th Percentile £625 £622 £680
England median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.43% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 30 38
10th Percentile £13.84 £13.00 £14.89
25th Percentile £16.90 £15.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £19.00 £18.21 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.37% +4.03% -17.88%
75th Percentile £42.34 £19.53 £22.66
90th Percentile £178.75 £26.83 £38.05
England median hourly rate £38.50 £25.08 £60.00
% change year-on-year +53.54% -58.21% +25.44%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 -16 141 £493 +22.64% 127
Yorkshire -25 117 £518 +3.50% 47
North East -16 34 £480 -10.70% 36
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 13 (4.58%) Confluence
2 4 (1.41%) Apache
2 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.06%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.06%) IBM Transformation Extender
3 3 (1.06%) nginx
3 3 (1.06%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.06%) WebSphere
4 2 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.70%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.70%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.35%) CICS
5 1 (0.35%) CMS
5 1 (0.35%) SAS
5 1 (0.35%) Traefik
Applications
1 6 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 103 (36.27%) AWS
2 81 (28.52%) Azure
3 52 (18.31%) GCP
4 28 (9.86%) GitHub
5 19 (6.69%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (6.34%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 18 (6.34%) OpenShift
7 17 (5.99%) OCI
8 15 (5.28%) AWS CloudFormation
9 14 (4.93%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (4.93%) Amazon EKS
10 13 (4.58%) Serverless
10 13 (4.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (4.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 11 (3.87%) AWS Lambda
12 11 (3.87%) Entra ID
12 11 (3.87%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
14 8 (2.82%) AWS KMS
15 7 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 32 (11.27%) Firewall
2 21 (7.39%) Network Security
3 19 (6.69%) DNS
4 11 (3.87%) TCP/IP
5 10 (3.52%) SAN
6 8 (2.82%) SD-WAN
6 8 (2.82%) WAN
7 7 (2.46%) Wireless
8 6 (2.11%) 3GPP
8 6 (2.11%) DHCP
8 6 (2.11%) RTP
8 6 (2.11%) VPN
8 6 (2.11%) Wireshark
9 3 (1.06%) Fibre Channel
9 3 (1.06%) FTP
9 3 (1.06%) iSCSI
9 3 (1.06%) NAS
9 3 (1.06%) SSL
9 3 (1.06%) VLAN
9 3 (1.06%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (8.10%) Oracle Database
2 16 (5.63%) RDBMS
2 16 (5.63%) Relational Database
3 14 (4.93%) Oracle Exadata
4 13 (4.58%) MongoDB
4 13 (4.58%) NoSQL
5 8 (2.82%) SQL Server
6 6 (2.11%) DynamoDB
6 6 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
7 5 (1.76%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (1.41%) Power BI
8 4 (1.41%) Sybase ASE
9 3 (1.06%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.06%) Big Data
9 3 (1.06%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
9 3 (1.06%) Oracle Database 12c
10 2 (0.70%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 43 (15.14%) Git
2 26 (9.15%) GitLab
3 21 (7.39%) JIRA
4 19 (6.69%) Jenkins
5 9 (3.17%) Mockito
6 7 (2.46%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (2.11%) TeamCity
8 5 (1.76%) Cucumber
8 5 (1.76%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.70%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.70%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.70%) Gatling
9 2 (0.70%) Gradle
9 2 (0.70%) LoadRunner
9 2 (0.70%) Maven
9 2 (0.70%) REST Assured
9 2 (0.70%) Toad
10 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.35%) IntelliJ
10 1 (0.35%) Jaeger
General
1 64 (22.54%) Social Skills
2 60 (21.13%) Finance
3 29 (10.21%) Banking
4 26 (9.15%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (8.80%) Public Sector
6 10 (3.52%) Legal
7 7 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.46%) Military
8 5 (1.76%) Aviation
8 5 (1.76%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.76%) Police
9 4 (1.41%) Corporate Banking
9 4 (1.41%) Law
10 3 (1.06%) Investment Banking
10 3 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.06%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.35%) Electronics
11 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 44 (15.49%) Senior
2 31 (10.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 29 (10.21%) Developer
4 26 (9.15%) Linux Engineer
5 22 (7.75%) Security Engineer
6 21 (7.39%) DevOps Engineer
7 20 (7.04%) Cloud Engineer
8 16 (5.63%) Unix Engineer
9 14 (4.93%) Consultant
10 13 (4.58%) AWS Engineer
10 13 (4.58%) Java Developer
10 13 (4.58%) Lead
11 12 (4.23%) Senior Developer
12 11 (3.87%) Cloud Security Engineer
13 10 (3.52%) Architect
13 10 (3.52%) DBA
13 10 (3.52%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 10 (3.52%) Software Engineer
13 10 (3.52%) Support Engineer
13 10 (3.52%) Unix Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (35.21%) Terraform
2 17 (5.99%) Kafka
3 16 (5.63%) REST
4 14 (4.93%) .NET
4 14 (4.93%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 11 (3.87%) JSON
6 10 (3.52%) Middleware
7 9 (3.17%) ActiveMQ
7 9 (3.17%) Django
7 9 (3.17%) JAX-RS
8 8 (2.82%) ARM Templates
8 8 (2.82%) YAML
9 6 (2.11%) .NET Core
9 6 (2.11%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (1.76%) Flask
10 5 (1.76%) Node.js
10 5 (1.76%) Redfish
11 4 (1.41%) Azure Blueprints
11 4 (1.41%) LDAP
11 4 (1.41%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 37 (13.03%) Cloud Native
2 25 (8.80%) Data Centre
3 23 (8.10%) Linux Command Line
4 20 (7.04%) PKI
4 20 (7.04%) Security Posture
5 17 (5.99%) Public Cloud
6 15 (5.28%) Replication
7 14 (4.93%) Legacy Systems
7 14 (4.93%) Management Information System
8 13 (4.58%) Hybrid Cloud
8 13 (4.58%) Mainframe
9 12 (4.23%) Data Protection Act
9 12 (4.23%) Onboarding
10 11 (3.87%) Distributed Systems
11 8 (2.82%) Enterprise Cloud
12 7 (2.46%) Operational Technology
13 6 (2.11%) Cloud Security Posture
13 6 (2.11%) SCADA
14 5 (1.76%) Robotics
15 4 (1.41%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 91 (32.04%) Windows
2 72 (25.35%) Unix
3 62 (21.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 28 (9.86%) Windows Server
5 26 (9.15%) AIX
6 20 (7.04%) Solaris
7 8 (2.82%) CentOS
8 6 (2.11%) Oracle Linux
8 6 (2.11%) Ubuntu
8 6 (2.11%) VMS
9 5 (1.76%) HPUX
9 5 (1.76%) SUSE
10 4 (1.41%) Mac OS
10 4 (1.41%) Mac OS X
10 4 (1.41%) zOS
11 2 (0.70%) CoreOS
11 2 (0.70%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.70%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.35%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (37.32%) CI/CD
2 96 (33.80%) Infrastructure as Code
3 78 (27.46%) DevOps
4 67 (23.59%) Agile
5 54 (19.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 53 (18.66%) Observability
7 48 (16.90%) Continuous Improvement
8 47 (16.55%) Migration
9 45 (15.85%) Change Management
10 40 (14.08%) Infrastructure Automation
11 39 (13.73%) High Availability
12 38 (13.38%) Cloud Security
13 34 (11.97%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (11.97%) Stakeholder Management
14 31 (10.92%) Disaster Recovery
14 31 (10.92%) ITIL
15 30 (10.56%) Cybersecurity
16 29 (10.21%) Containerisation
17 28 (9.86%) Test Automation
18 27 (9.51%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 109 (38.38%) Python
2 75 (26.41%) Bash
3 73 (25.70%) PowerShell
4 48 (16.90%) Java
5 42 (14.79%) SQL
6 17 (5.99%) Shell Script
7 15 (5.28%) Bicep
8 13 (4.58%) C#
9 11 (3.87%) JavaScript
10 9 (3.17%) Go
11 7 (2.46%) Search Processing Language
12 4 (1.41%) Groovy
12 4 (1.41%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.41%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (1.06%) JCL
13 3 (1.06%) Rust
13 3 (1.06%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.70%) DCL
14 2 (0.70%) Perl
14 2 (0.70%) REXX
Qualifications
1 58 (20.42%) Security Cleared
2 46 (16.20%) SC Cleared
3 35 (12.32%) Degree
4 28 (9.86%) CISSP
5 21 (7.39%) AWS Certification
5 21 (7.39%) Azure Certification
6 7 (2.46%) CompTIA Security+
7 6 (2.11%) CISM
7 6 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.11%) RHCE
8 5 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (1.41%) CEH
9 4 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.41%) DV Cleared
9 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 3 (1.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.06%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (1.06%) Network+ Certification
10 3 (1.06%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (2.11%) GRC
3 5 (1.76%) HIPAA
4 4 (1.41%) NIST
4 4 (1.41%) SLA
5 3 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.70%) Data Quality
6 2 (0.70%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.35%) Def Stans
7 1 (0.35%) GDPR
7 1 (0.35%) NCSC
7 1 (0.35%) QA
7 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 53 (18.66%) Docker
2 42 (14.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (9.86%) Virtual Machines
4 23 (8.10%) Active Directory
5 17 (5.99%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (5.63%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (4.58%) KVM
7 13 (4.58%) vSphere
8 10 (3.52%) NFS
9 9 (3.17%) Hyper-V
10 8 (2.82%) Firmware
11 6 (2.11%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (1.41%) Ceph
13 3 (1.06%) GPFS
13 3 (1.06%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 3 (1.06%) Time Sharing Option
13 3 (1.06%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 3 (1.06%) VMware NSX
14 1 (0.35%) HDFS
14 1 (0.35%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 77 (27.11%) Kubernetes
2 73 (25.70%) Ansible
3 20 (7.04%) Grafana
3 20 (7.04%) Progress Chef
3 20 (7.04%) Prometheus
4 19 (6.69%) Oracle RMAN
5 18 (6.34%) Data Guard
6 8 (2.82%) Istio
6 8 (2.82%) VxRail
7 7 (2.46%) Tivoli
7 7 (2.46%) vCenter Server
8 6 (2.11%) Packer
8 6 (2.11%) Tivoli Storage Manager
9 5 (1.76%) Dell DRAC
9 5 (1.76%) Nessus
10 4 (1.41%) Argo
10 4 (1.41%) McAfee ePO
10 4 (1.41%) Oracle ZFS
10 4 (1.41%) ZABBIX
11 3 (1.06%) PowerBroker
Vendors
1 45 (15.85%) Oracle
1 45 (15.85%) VMware
2 43 (15.14%) Microsoft
3 39 (13.73%) Red Hat
4 24 (8.45%) Google
5 21 (7.39%) Splunk
6 19 (6.69%) IBM
7 17 (5.99%) Cisco
8 13 (4.58%) Dell
9 9 (3.17%) ServiceNow
10 7 (2.46%) Dynatrace
10 7 (2.46%) Fortinet
10 7 (2.46%) Tenable
11 5 (1.76%) AppDynamics
11 5 (1.76%) Databricks
11 5 (1.76%) HP
11 5 (1.76%) Juniper
12 4 (1.41%) Carbon Black
12 4 (1.41%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.41%) Sybase