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

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 31 38
Rank change year-on-year -12 +7 -1
Contract jobs citing Linux 320 223 201
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.43% 5.81% 4.37%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.02% 37.42% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 197 155 134
10th Percentile £358 £343 £375
25th Percentile £403 £375 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.72% -2.10%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £619
90th Percentile £650 £665 £661
England median daily rate £520 £537 £540
% change year-on-year -3.17% -0.56% -7.69%
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 £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 820 596 671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.35% 15.53% 14.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 542 391 437
10th Percentile £180 £181 £178
25th Percentile £258 £263 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £433 £400 £438
Median % change year-on-year +8.13% -8.57% -2.78%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £569
90th Percentile £625 £612 £693
England median daily rate £463 £463 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 20 85
10th Percentile £16.62 £13.00 -
25th Percentile £17.25 £13.90 £10.95
Median hourly rate £21.32 £17.47 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.04% +9.19% -25.25%
75th Percentile £43.56 £18.87 £19.18
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.75 £31.00
England median hourly rate £31.75 £23.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +38.04% -8.00% -41.18%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -10 160 £484 +20.40% 60
Yorkshire -20 144 £500 -4.76% 25
North East -20 22 £480 +0.52% 20
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 (6.56%) Confluence
2 9 (2.81%) CICS
3 3 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.94%) nginx
4 2 (0.63%) Apache
4 2 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.63%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.31%) CMS
5 1 (0.31%) SAS
5 1 (0.31%) TPMS
Applications
1 7 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.31%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.31%) Odoo
2 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 104 (32.50%) AWS
2 73 (22.81%) Azure
3 46 (14.38%) GCP
4 41 (12.81%) OpenShift
5 27 (8.44%) GitHub
6 17 (5.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 16 (5.00%) OCI
8 15 (4.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 10 (3.13%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (2.81%) Serverless
11 8 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (2.19%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (2.19%) Amazon ECS
12 7 (2.19%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
14 5 (1.56%) Amazon SQS
14 5 (1.56%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (12.81%) Firewall
2 25 (7.81%) SAN
3 17 (5.31%) DNS
4 15 (4.69%) Network Security
5 11 (3.44%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.81%) VSAN
7 7 (2.19%) NAS
7 7 (2.19%) SSL
8 6 (1.88%) 3GPP
8 6 (1.88%) RTP
8 6 (1.88%) VPN
8 6 (1.88%) Wireshark
9 4 (1.25%) iSCSI
10 3 (0.94%) FTP
10 3 (0.94%) Wireless
11 2 (0.63%) BIG-IP
11 2 (0.63%) HTTP
11 2 (0.63%) Intrusion Detection
11 2 (0.63%) SNMP
11 2 (0.63%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.75%) Oracle Database
2 19 (5.94%) MongoDB
3 17 (5.31%) Relational Database
4 16 (5.00%) RDBMS
5 14 (4.38%) SQL Server
6 13 (4.06%) NoSQL
6 13 (4.06%) Oracle Exadata
7 12 (3.75%) PostgreSQL
8 9 (2.81%) DataStage
8 9 (2.81%) Elasticsearch
9 6 (1.88%) Db2
9 6 (1.88%) Oracle Database 12c
10 5 (1.56%) DynamoDB
10 5 (1.56%) Sybase ASE
11 3 (0.94%) Amazon Aurora
11 3 (0.94%) BusinessObjects
12 2 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
12 2 (0.63%) Apache Cassandra
12 2 (0.63%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.63%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 34 (10.63%) GitLab
1 34 (10.63%) JIRA
2 31 (9.69%) Git
2 31 (9.69%) Jenkins
3 14 (4.38%) Mockito
4 6 (1.88%) TeamCity
5 3 (0.94%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.94%) Cucumber
5 3 (0.94%) Liquibase
5 3 (0.94%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.63%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.63%) Gatling
6 2 (0.63%) Gradle
6 2 (0.63%) Jaeger
6 2 (0.63%) LoadRunner
6 2 (0.63%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.63%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.63%) Toad
7 1 (0.31%) Hudson
General
1 70 (21.88%) Social Skills
2 69 (21.56%) Finance
3 34 (10.63%) Banking
4 33 (10.31%) Public Sector
5 19 (5.94%) Analytical Skills
6 9 (2.81%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (2.50%) Legal
8 6 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.56%) Aviation
9 5 (1.56%) Fire and Rescue
9 5 (1.56%) Police
10 4 (1.25%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.25%) Military
11 3 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.94%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.63%) Advertising
12 2 (0.63%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.31%) Law
13 1 (0.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 48 (15.00%) Senior
2 34 (10.63%) Developer
3 30 (9.38%) Linux Engineer
4 27 (8.44%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (8.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 23 (7.19%) Security Engineer
7 22 (6.88%) Java Developer
8 18 (5.63%) Software Engineer
9 17 (5.31%) Consultant
10 16 (5.00%) DBA
11 14 (4.38%) Cloud Engineer
12 13 (4.06%) Unix Engineer
13 12 (3.75%) Data Centre Engineer
13 12 (3.75%) Platform Engineer
13 12 (3.75%) Senior Developer
14 11 (3.44%) Security Consultant
14 11 (3.44%) Senior Java Developer
15 10 (3.13%) Analyst
16 9 (2.81%) Infrastructure Designer
16 9 (2.81%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (5.63%) Kafka
2 16 (5.00%) Middleware
3 14 (4.38%) JAX-RS
4 13 (4.06%) ActiveMQ
4 13 (4.06%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 12 (3.75%) REST
6 11 (3.44%) LDAP
7 10 (3.13%) Redfish
8 9 (2.81%) .NET
9 8 (2.50%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (1.88%) .NET Core
10 6 (1.88%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (1.88%) YAML
11 5 (1.56%) OpenTelemetry
11 5 (1.56%) XML
12 4 (1.25%) Flash
12 4 (1.25%) JSON
12 4 (1.25%) Node.js
12 4 (1.25%) RESTful
13 3 (0.94%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 39 (12.19%) Data Centre
2 35 (10.94%) Cloud Native
3 30 (9.38%) Linux Command Line
4 26 (8.13%) Security Posture
5 19 (5.94%) Replication
6 17 (5.31%) Mainframe
7 16 (5.00%) Public Cloud
8 15 (4.69%) Legacy Systems
9 14 (4.38%) Hybrid Cloud
10 13 (4.06%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (3.75%) Management Information System
12 11 (3.44%) Cloud Security Posture
12 11 (3.44%) Distributed Systems
12 11 (3.44%) PKI
13 9 (2.81%) BYOD
13 9 (2.81%) VSAM
14 7 (2.19%) Enterprise Storage
15 5 (1.56%) Enterprise Cloud
15 5 (1.56%) FlexPod
15 5 (1.56%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 107 (33.44%) Windows
2 87 (27.19%) Unix
3 74 (23.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 39 (12.19%) AIX
5 25 (7.81%) Solaris
5 25 (7.81%) Windows Server
6 13 (4.06%) Mac OS X
7 12 (3.75%) VMS
8 9 (2.81%) Ubuntu
9 8 (2.50%) Oracle Linux
10 7 (2.19%) CentOS
10 7 (2.19%) CoreOS
11 5 (1.56%) Data ONTAP
11 5 (1.56%) HPUX
11 5 (1.56%) SUSE
11 5 (1.56%) zOS
12 3 (0.94%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.63%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (29.69%) CI/CD
2 86 (26.88%) DevOps
3 69 (21.56%) Agile
4 63 (19.69%) Infrastructure as Code
5 56 (17.50%) Migration
6 42 (13.13%) Problem-Solving
7 41 (12.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 39 (12.19%) Test Automation
9 38 (11.88%) Observability
10 37 (11.56%) Change Management
10 37 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
10 37 (11.56%) Performance Tuning
11 34 (10.63%) Containerisation
11 34 (10.63%) Roadmaps
12 33 (10.31%) Cloud Security
12 33 (10.31%) Infrastructure Automation
12 33 (10.31%) Microservices
13 32 (10.00%) ITIL
14 29 (9.06%) High Availability
15 27 (8.44%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 121 (37.81%) Python
2 73 (22.81%) Bash
3 64 (20.00%) PowerShell
4 50 (15.63%) Java
5 49 (15.31%) SQL
6 18 (5.63%) Shell Script
7 15 (4.69%) JavaScript
8 11 (3.44%) Go
9 9 (2.81%) C#
9 9 (2.81%) COBOL
9 9 (2.81%) Rust
9 9 (2.81%) TypeScript
10 7 (2.19%) Bicep
11 5 (1.56%) JCL
12 4 (1.25%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.25%) Perl
13 2 (0.63%) DCL
13 2 (0.63%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.63%) Ruby
13 2 (0.63%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 58 (18.13%) Security Cleared
2 39 (12.19%) SC Cleared
3 33 (10.31%) Degree
4 31 (9.69%) CISSP
5 21 (6.56%) AWS Certification
6 15 (4.69%) Azure Certification
7 13 (4.06%) CompTIA Security+
8 9 (2.81%) DV Cleared
9 8 (2.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (2.50%) RHCE
10 7 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (1.88%) OCP
11 6 (1.88%) Oracle Certification
12 5 (1.56%) MCSA
12 5 (1.56%) MCSE
13 4 (1.25%) CISM
14 3 (0.94%) CEH
14 3 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.81%) HIPAA
2 6 (1.88%) GDPR
2 6 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (1.88%) NIST
3 5 (1.56%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 4 (1.25%) GRC
4 4 (1.25%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.94%) QA
5 3 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.94%) SLA
6 1 (0.31%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.31%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.31%) GLBA
6 1 (0.31%) GxP
6 1 (0.31%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.31%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (19.38%) Docker
2 49 (15.31%) Virtual Machines
3 48 (15.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (6.56%) KVM
5 19 (5.94%) NFS
5 19 (5.94%) vSphere
6 18 (5.63%) Active Directory
7 16 (5.00%) Oracle RAC
8 15 (4.69%) Hyper-V
9 14 (4.38%) Firmware
10 12 (3.75%) VMware ESXi
11 7 (2.19%) VMware NSX
12 5 (1.56%) Time Sharing Option
13 4 (1.25%) GPFS
14 3 (0.94%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 2 (0.63%) SRDF
16 1 (0.31%) Ceph
16 1 (0.31%) Embedded Firmware
16 1 (0.31%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 1 (0.31%) zsh
Systems Management
1 95 (29.69%) Ansible
2 94 (29.38%) Terraform
3 78 (24.38%) Kubernetes
4 22 (6.88%) Prometheus
5 21 (6.56%) Grafana
5 21 (6.56%) Oracle RMAN
6 19 (5.94%) Progress Chef
7 17 (5.31%) Data Guard
8 11 (3.44%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.13%) Dell DRAC
10 8 (2.50%) Packer
10 8 (2.50%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 7 (2.19%) PowerCLI
11 7 (2.19%) vRealize
12 6 (1.88%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.88%) Nessus
13 5 (1.56%) Argo
13 5 (1.56%) CASB
13 5 (1.56%) Puppet
13 5 (1.56%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 56 (17.50%) VMware
2 49 (15.31%) Red Hat
3 47 (14.69%) Oracle
4 32 (10.00%) IBM
4 32 (10.00%) Microsoft
5 25 (7.81%) Google
6 17 (5.31%) Splunk
7 15 (4.69%) Cisco
8 13 (4.06%) ServiceNow
9 10 (3.13%) CyberArk
10 9 (2.81%) Broadcom
10 9 (2.81%) Dell
10 9 (2.81%) HP
11 8 (2.50%) Dynatrace
12 7 (2.19%) Tenable
13 6 (1.88%) NetApp
13 6 (1.88%) Remedy
14 5 (1.56%) Brocade
14 5 (1.56%) Sybase
14 5 (1.56%) Varonis