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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 39 52
Rank change year-on-year -25 +13 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 274 229 146
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 3.59% 5.61% 3.53%
As % of the Operating Systems category 31.28% 36.18% 27.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 164 89
10th Percentile £358 £317 £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 £615 £609 £619
90th Percentile £650 £688 £690
England median daily rate £525 £524 £550
% change year-on-year +0.24% -4.77% -4.35%
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 876 633 522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.49% 15.50% 12.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 580 438 303
10th Percentile £185 £170 £178
25th Percentile £280 £252 £288
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £439 £400 £450
Median % change year-on-year +9.75% -11.11% +2.86%
75th Percentile £528 £520 £572
90th Percentile £615 £620 £648
England median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 28 38
10th Percentile £13.89 £13.00 £14.93
25th Percentile £16.90 £15.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £19.00 £18.13 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.83% +3.57% -17.88%
75th Percentile £47.94 £19.76 £23.10
90th Percentile £111.75 £30.19 £38.05
England median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -58.08% +26.32%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 -15 137 £493 +22.94% 191
Yorkshire -29 112 £521 +4.25% 102
North East -13 33 £475 -11.63% 72
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 (4.74%) Confluence
2 4 (1.46%) Apache
2 4 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.09%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.09%) IBM Transformation Extender
3 3 (1.09%) nginx
3 3 (1.09%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.09%) WebSphere
4 2 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.73%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.73%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.73%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.36%) CMS
5 1 (0.36%) SAS
5 1 (0.36%) Traefik
Applications
1 6 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 101 (36.86%) AWS
2 79 (28.83%) Azure
3 52 (18.98%) GCP
4 26 (9.49%) GitHub
5 19 (6.93%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (6.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 17 (6.20%) OCI
8 16 (5.84%) OpenShift
9 15 (5.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 13 (4.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 12 (4.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (4.38%) Amazon ECS
11 12 (4.38%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (4.38%) Serverless
12 11 (4.01%) Entra ID
13 9 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (3.28%) Azure Monitor
13 9 (3.28%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (2.92%) AWS KMS
15 7 (2.55%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 31 (11.31%) Firewall
2 19 (6.93%) DNS
2 19 (6.93%) Network Security
3 11 (4.01%) TCP/IP
4 10 (3.65%) SAN
5 8 (2.92%) SD-WAN
5 8 (2.92%) WAN
6 7 (2.55%) Wireless
7 6 (2.19%) 3GPP
7 6 (2.19%) DHCP
7 6 (2.19%) RTP
7 6 (2.19%) VPN
7 6 (2.19%) Wireshark
8 3 (1.09%) Fibre Channel
8 3 (1.09%) FTP
8 3 (1.09%) HTTP
8 3 (1.09%) iSCSI
8 3 (1.09%) NAS
8 3 (1.09%) SSL
8 3 (1.09%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (8.03%) Oracle Database
2 17 (6.20%) RDBMS
2 17 (6.20%) Relational Database
3 14 (5.11%) Oracle Exadata
4 12 (4.38%) NoSQL
5 10 (3.65%) MongoDB
5 10 (3.65%) SQL Server
6 6 (2.19%) Elasticsearch
6 6 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (1.82%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.46%) DynamoDB
8 4 (1.46%) Power BI
8 4 (1.46%) Sybase ASE
9 3 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (1.09%) Big Data
9 3 (1.09%) BusinessObjects
9 3 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
10 2 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.73%) Apache Hive
10 2 (0.73%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 44 (16.06%) Git
2 27 (9.85%) GitLab
3 21 (7.66%) JIRA
4 20 (7.30%) Jenkins
5 7 (2.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 6 (2.19%) Mockito
6 6 (2.19%) TeamCity
7 5 (1.82%) Cucumber
7 5 (1.82%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.73%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.73%) Burp Suite
8 2 (0.73%) Gatling
8 2 (0.73%) Gradle
8 2 (0.73%) LoadRunner
8 2 (0.73%) Maven
8 2 (0.73%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.73%) Toad
9 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.36%) Jaeger
9 1 (0.36%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 65 (23.72%) Social Skills
2 60 (21.90%) Finance
3 30 (10.95%) Banking
4 25 (9.12%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (8.76%) Public Sector
6 8 (2.92%) Legal
7 7 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.55%) Military
8 5 (1.82%) Aviation
8 5 (1.82%) Fire and Rescue
8 5 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 5 (1.82%) Police
9 4 (1.46%) Corporate Banking
9 4 (1.46%) Law
10 3 (1.09%) Investment Banking
10 3 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.09%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.36%) Electronics
11 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 41 (14.96%) Senior
2 30 (10.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 27 (9.85%) Developer
3 27 (9.85%) Linux Engineer
4 22 (8.03%) DevOps Engineer
4 22 (8.03%) Security Engineer
5 20 (7.30%) Cloud Engineer
6 16 (5.84%) Unix Engineer
7 14 (5.11%) Consultant
8 13 (4.74%) Lead
9 12 (4.38%) AWS Engineer
10 11 (4.01%) Cloud Security Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) DBA
11 10 (3.65%) Java Developer
11 10 (3.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Software Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Support Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Unix Linux Engineer
12 9 (3.28%) Senior Developer
13 8 (2.92%) Security Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (36.50%) Terraform
2 16 (5.84%) REST
3 15 (5.47%) Kafka
4 14 (5.11%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 13 (4.74%) .NET
6 11 (4.01%) JSON
7 9 (3.28%) Django
7 9 (3.28%) Middleware
8 8 (2.92%) ARM Templates
8 8 (2.92%) YAML
9 6 (2.19%) .NET Core
9 6 (2.19%) ActiveMQ
9 6 (2.19%) JAX-RS
9 6 (2.19%) RabbitMQ
10 5 (1.82%) Flask
10 5 (1.82%) Node.js
10 5 (1.82%) Redfish
10 5 (1.82%) RESTful
11 4 (1.46%) Azure Blueprints
11 4 (1.46%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (13.50%) Cloud Native
2 24 (8.76%) Data Centre
3 23 (8.39%) Linux Command Line
4 20 (7.30%) PKI
4 20 (7.30%) Security Posture
5 18 (6.57%) Public Cloud
6 16 (5.84%) Replication
7 14 (5.11%) Management Information System
8 12 (4.38%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (4.38%) Hybrid Cloud
8 12 (4.38%) Legacy Systems
8 12 (4.38%) Onboarding
9 10 (3.65%) Distributed Systems
9 10 (3.65%) Mainframe
10 9 (3.28%) Enterprise Cloud
11 7 (2.55%) Operational Technology
12 6 (2.19%) Cloud Security Posture
12 6 (2.19%) SCADA
13 5 (1.82%) Clustering
13 5 (1.82%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 88 (32.12%) Windows
2 70 (25.55%) Unix
3 59 (21.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 27 (9.85%) Windows Server
5 25 (9.12%) AIX
6 19 (6.93%) Solaris
7 8 (2.92%) CentOS
8 6 (2.19%) Ubuntu
8 6 (2.19%) VMS
9 5 (1.82%) HPUX
9 5 (1.82%) Oracle Linux
9 5 (1.82%) SUSE
10 4 (1.46%) zOS
11 3 (1.09%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.73%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.73%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.73%) OpenVMS
12 2 (0.73%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (39.05%) CI/CD
2 96 (35.04%) Infrastructure as Code
3 79 (28.83%) DevOps
4 65 (23.72%) Agile
5 53 (19.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 53 (19.34%) Observability
6 48 (17.52%) Continuous Improvement
7 47 (17.15%) Migration
8 45 (16.42%) Change Management
9 39 (14.23%) Cloud Security
9 39 (14.23%) Infrastructure Automation
10 37 (13.50%) High Availability
11 35 (12.77%) Stakeholder Management
12 33 (12.04%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (11.31%) Disaster Recovery
14 30 (10.95%) Cybersecurity
14 30 (10.95%) ITIL
15 29 (10.58%) Containerisation
16 28 (10.22%) Software Engineering
17 27 (9.85%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 111 (40.51%) Python
2 75 (27.37%) Bash
3 70 (25.55%) PowerShell
4 45 (16.42%) Java
5 41 (14.96%) SQL
6 17 (6.20%) Shell Script
7 15 (5.47%) Bicep
8 12 (4.38%) C#
9 11 (4.01%) Go
9 11 (4.01%) JavaScript
10 7 (2.55%) Search Processing Language
11 4 (1.46%) Groovy
11 4 (1.46%) Kotlin
11 4 (1.46%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (1.09%) JCL
12 3 (1.09%) Rust
12 3 (1.09%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.73%) DCL
13 2 (0.73%) Perl
13 2 (0.73%) REXX
Qualifications
1 56 (20.44%) Security Cleared
2 45 (16.42%) SC Cleared
3 35 (12.77%) Degree
4 28 (10.22%) CISSP
5 22 (8.03%) AWS Certification
6 21 (7.66%) Azure Certification
7 7 (2.55%) CompTIA Security+
8 6 (2.19%) CISM
8 6 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (2.19%) RHCE
9 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (1.46%) CEH
10 4 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (1.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (1.09%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (1.09%) DV Cleared
11 3 (1.09%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (1.09%) Network+ Certification
11 3 (1.09%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (2.19%) GRC
1 6 (2.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (1.46%) HIPAA
2 4 (1.46%) NIST
2 4 (1.46%) SLA
3 2 (0.73%) Data Quality
3 2 (0.73%) PCI DSS
3 2 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (0.36%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 1 (0.36%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.36%) GDPR
4 1 (0.36%) NCSC
4 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.36%) WCAG
System Software
1 51 (18.61%) Docker
2 39 (14.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (9.12%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (7.30%) Active Directory
5 18 (6.57%) Oracle RAC
6 15 (5.47%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (4.74%) KVM
8 12 (4.38%) vSphere
9 10 (3.65%) NFS
10 9 (3.28%) Hyper-V
11 8 (2.92%) Firmware
12 6 (2.19%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (1.46%) Ceph
14 3 (1.09%) GPFS
14 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 3 (1.09%) Time Sharing Option
14 3 (1.09%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 1 (0.36%) HDFS
15 1 (0.36%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 1 (0.36%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 77 (28.10%) Kubernetes
2 74 (27.01%) Ansible
3 22 (8.03%) Prometheus
4 21 (7.66%) Grafana
5 20 (7.30%) Progress Chef
6 18 (6.57%) Data Guard
6 18 (6.57%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (2.92%) Istio
7 8 (2.92%) VxRail
8 7 (2.55%) Tivoli
8 7 (2.55%) vCenter Server
9 6 (2.19%) Packer
9 6 (2.19%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 5 (1.82%) Dell DRAC
10 5 (1.82%) Nessus
11 4 (1.46%) Argo
11 4 (1.46%) McAfee ePO
11 4 (1.46%) Oracle ZFS
11 4 (1.46%) ZABBIX
12 3 (1.09%) PowerBroker
Vendors
1 45 (16.42%) Oracle
2 43 (15.69%) Microsoft
3 42 (15.33%) VMware
4 39 (14.23%) Red Hat
5 24 (8.76%) Google
6 23 (8.39%) Splunk
7 17 (6.20%) Cisco
8 16 (5.84%) IBM
9 13 (4.74%) Dell
10 10 (3.65%) ServiceNow
11 8 (2.92%) Dynatrace
12 7 (2.55%) Fortinet
12 7 (2.55%) Tenable
13 5 (1.82%) AppDynamics
13 5 (1.82%) Databricks
13 5 (1.82%) HP
13 5 (1.82%) Juniper
14 4 (1.46%) Carbon Black
14 4 (1.46%) McAfee
14 4 (1.46%) Sybase