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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 30 37
Rank change year-on-year -9 +7 +1
Contract jobs citing Linux 329 228 194
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.52% 5.81% 4.45%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.59% 38.00% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 159 127
10th Percentile £358 £338 £375
25th Percentile £406 £374 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -2.72% -2.10%
75th Percentile £612 £599 £619
90th Percentile £650 £655 £668
England median daily rate £525 £536 £548
% change year-on-year -2.05% -2.10% -6.41%
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% +83.02%
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 831 600 635
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.42% 15.28% 14.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 549 395 411
10th Percentile £181 £182 £179
25th Percentile £250 £265 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £430 £400 £444
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -9.91% -4.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £572
90th Percentile £630 £612 £725
England median daily rate £465 £460 £475
% change year-on-year +1.09% -3.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 21 77
10th Percentile £16.21 £13.00 -
25th Percentile £17.07 £14.20 £10.95
Median hourly rate £19.84 £17.50 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.37% +9.38% -27.27%
75th Percentile £38.38 £18.87 £19.18
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.75 £38.70
England median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +41.30% -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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -12 169 £485 +20.65% 69
Yorkshire -21 142 £500 -4.76% 29
North East -25 24 £500 +4.71% 24
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 22 (6.69%) Confluence
2 9 (2.74%) CICS
3 3 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.91%) nginx
4 2 (0.61%) Apache
4 2 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.61%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.61%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.30%) CMS
5 1 (0.30%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (2.13%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.30%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.30%) Odoo
2 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.30%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 109 (33.13%) AWS
2 79 (24.01%) Azure
3 49 (14.89%) GCP
4 41 (12.46%) OpenShift
5 28 (8.51%) GitHub
6 18 (5.47%) OCI
7 17 (5.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 17 (5.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 13 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
9 12 (3.65%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (2.74%) Amazon ECS
10 9 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
10 9 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (2.74%) Serverless
11 8 (2.43%) AWS Lambda
12 7 (2.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (1.82%) Amazon EC2
13 6 (1.82%) Amazon S3
13 6 (1.82%) Azure AKS
14 5 (1.52%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 43 (13.07%) Firewall
2 25 (7.60%) SAN
3 18 (5.47%) DNS
4 17 (5.17%) Network Security
5 12 (3.65%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.74%) VSAN
7 7 (2.13%) NAS
7 7 (2.13%) VPN
8 6 (1.82%) 3GPP
8 6 (1.82%) RTP
8 6 (1.82%) SSL
8 6 (1.82%) Wireshark
9 4 (1.22%) iSCSI
10 3 (0.91%) DHCP
10 3 (0.91%) FTP
10 3 (0.91%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.91%) WAN
10 3 (0.91%) Wireless
11 2 (0.61%) Intrusion Detection
11 2 (0.61%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (8.81%) Oracle Database
2 20 (6.08%) MongoDB
3 18 (5.47%) Relational Database
4 17 (5.17%) RDBMS
5 14 (4.26%) NoSQL
5 14 (4.26%) Oracle Exadata
5 14 (4.26%) SQL Server
6 12 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
7 9 (2.74%) DataStage
7 9 (2.74%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (1.82%) Db2
8 6 (1.82%) Oracle Database 12c
9 5 (1.52%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.52%) Sybase ASE
10 3 (0.91%) Amazon Aurora
10 3 (0.91%) BusinessObjects
11 2 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.61%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.61%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 35 (10.64%) JIRA
2 34 (10.33%) GitLab
3 32 (9.73%) Git
3 32 (9.73%) Jenkins
4 15 (4.56%) Mockito
5 6 (1.82%) TeamCity
6 4 (1.22%) Cucumber
6 4 (1.22%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.91%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.91%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.61%) Burp Suite
8 2 (0.61%) Gatling
8 2 (0.61%) Gradle
8 2 (0.61%) Jaeger
8 2 (0.61%) LoadRunner
8 2 (0.61%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.61%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.61%) Toad
9 1 (0.30%) Hudson
General
1 74 (22.49%) Social Skills
2 69 (20.97%) Finance
3 34 (10.33%) Banking
3 34 (10.33%) Public Sector
4 20 (6.08%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (2.74%) Influencing Skills
6 8 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 8 (2.43%) Legal
7 5 (1.52%) Aviation
7 5 (1.52%) Fire and Rescue
7 5 (1.52%) Military
7 5 (1.52%) Police
8 4 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.22%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
9 3 (0.91%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.61%) Advertising
10 2 (0.61%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.30%) Law
11 1 (0.30%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 49 (14.89%) Senior
2 36 (10.94%) Developer
3 31 (9.42%) Linux Engineer
4 28 (8.51%) DevOps Engineer
5 26 (7.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 26 (7.90%) Security Engineer
6 23 (6.99%) Java Developer
7 18 (5.47%) Software Engineer
8 17 (5.17%) Consultant
9 16 (4.86%) Cloud Engineer
9 16 (4.86%) DBA
10 14 (4.26%) Unix Engineer
11 13 (3.95%) Senior Developer
12 12 (3.65%) Data Centre Engineer
12 12 (3.65%) Platform Engineer
12 12 (3.65%) Senior Java Developer
13 11 (3.34%) Security Consultant
14 10 (3.04%) Analyst
15 9 (2.74%) Infrastructure Designer
15 9 (2.74%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.78%) Kafka
2 16 (4.86%) Middleware
3 15 (4.56%) JAX-RS
4 14 (4.26%) ActiveMQ
4 14 (4.26%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 14 (4.26%) REST
5 11 (3.34%) .NET
5 11 (3.34%) LDAP
6 10 (3.04%) Redfish
7 8 (2.43%) Elastic Stack
7 8 (2.43%) YAML
8 6 (1.82%) .NET Core
8 6 (1.82%) RabbitMQ
9 5 (1.52%) ARM Templates
9 5 (1.52%) JSON
9 5 (1.52%) OpenTelemetry
9 5 (1.52%) RESTful
9 5 (1.52%) XML
10 4 (1.22%) Flash
10 4 (1.22%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 39 (11.85%) Data Centre
2 36 (10.94%) Cloud Native
3 30 (9.12%) Linux Command Line
4 28 (8.51%) Security Posture
5 20 (6.08%) Replication
6 17 (5.17%) Mainframe
7 16 (4.86%) Public Cloud
8 15 (4.56%) Hybrid Cloud
8 15 (4.56%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (3.95%) Data Protection Act
9 13 (3.95%) Management Information System
10 12 (3.65%) Cloud Security Posture
10 12 (3.65%) Distributed Systems
11 11 (3.34%) PKI
12 9 (2.74%) BYOD
12 9 (2.74%) VSAM
13 7 (2.13%) Enterprise Storage
14 6 (1.82%) Enterprise Cloud
15 5 (1.52%) FlexPod
15 5 (1.52%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 109 (33.13%) Windows
2 90 (27.36%) Unix
3 76 (23.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 40 (12.16%) AIX
5 26 (7.90%) Solaris
5 26 (7.90%) Windows Server
6 13 (3.95%) Mac OS X
7 12 (3.65%) VMS
8 9 (2.74%) Ubuntu
9 8 (2.43%) Oracle Linux
10 7 (2.13%) CoreOS
11 6 (1.82%) CentOS
12 5 (1.52%) Data ONTAP
12 5 (1.52%) HPUX
12 5 (1.52%) SUSE
12 5 (1.52%) zOS
13 3 (0.91%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.61%) OpenVMS
15 1 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
15 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (30.40%) CI/CD
2 90 (27.36%) DevOps
3 75 (22.80%) Agile
4 71 (21.58%) Infrastructure as Code
5 57 (17.33%) Migration
6 45 (13.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 42 (12.77%) Problem-Solving
7 42 (12.77%) Test Automation
8 41 (12.46%) Continuous Improvement
9 40 (12.16%) Change Management
9 40 (12.16%) Observability
10 38 (11.55%) Cloud Security
11 37 (11.25%) Performance Tuning
12 36 (10.94%) Containerisation
12 36 (10.94%) Infrastructure Automation
12 36 (10.94%) Roadmaps
13 34 (10.33%) Microservices
14 33 (10.03%) ITIL
15 32 (9.73%) High Availability
16 29 (8.81%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 126 (38.30%) Python
2 79 (24.01%) Bash
3 70 (21.28%) PowerShell
4 53 (16.11%) Java
5 49 (14.89%) SQL
6 18 (5.47%) Shell Script
7 16 (4.86%) JavaScript
8 12 (3.65%) Bicep
9 11 (3.34%) Go
10 10 (3.04%) C#
11 9 (2.74%) COBOL
11 9 (2.74%) Rust
12 8 (2.43%) TypeScript
13 5 (1.52%) JCL
14 4 (1.22%) Kotlin
15 3 (0.91%) Perl
16 2 (0.61%) C
16 2 (0.61%) C++
16 2 (0.61%) PL/SQL
16 2 (0.61%) REXX
Qualifications
1 62 (18.84%) Security Cleared
2 42 (12.77%) SC Cleared
3 34 (10.33%) Degree
4 33 (10.03%) CISSP
5 23 (6.99%) AWS Certification
6 17 (5.17%) Azure Certification
7 13 (3.95%) CompTIA Security+
8 9 (2.74%) DV Cleared
9 8 (2.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (2.13%) RHCE
11 6 (1.82%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (1.82%) OCP
11 6 (1.82%) Oracle Certification
12 5 (1.52%) MCSA
12 5 (1.52%) MCSE
13 4 (1.22%) CISM
14 3 (0.91%) CEH
14 3 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (2.74%) HIPAA
2 6 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (1.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 5 (1.52%) GDPR
3 5 (1.52%) NIST
4 4 (1.22%) GRC
5 3 (0.91%) PCI DSS
5 3 (0.91%) QA
5 3 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (0.91%) SLA
6 1 (0.30%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.30%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.30%) GxP
6 1 (0.30%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.30%) WCAG
System Software
1 64 (19.45%) Docker
2 49 (14.89%) Virtual Machines
2 49 (14.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (6.99%) KVM
4 19 (5.78%) Active Directory
4 19 (5.78%) NFS
4 19 (5.78%) vSphere
5 17 (5.17%) Oracle RAC
6 15 (4.56%) Hyper-V
7 14 (4.26%) Firmware
8 12 (3.65%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (2.43%) VMware NSX
10 5 (1.52%) Time Sharing Option
11 4 (1.22%) GPFS
12 3 (0.91%) Ceph
12 3 (0.91%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 2 (0.61%) SRDF
14 1 (0.30%) Embedded Firmware
14 1 (0.30%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.30%) zsh
Systems Management
1 102 (31.00%) Terraform
2 98 (29.79%) Ansible
3 85 (25.84%) Kubernetes
4 23 (6.99%) Prometheus
5 22 (6.69%) Grafana
5 22 (6.69%) Oracle RMAN
6 21 (6.38%) Progress Chef
7 18 (5.47%) Data Guard
8 11 (3.34%) vCenter Server
9 10 (3.04%) Dell DRAC
10 8 (2.43%) Packer
10 8 (2.43%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 7 (2.13%) PowerCLI
11 7 (2.13%) vRealize
12 6 (1.82%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.82%) Nessus
13 5 (1.52%) Argo
13 5 (1.52%) CASB
13 5 (1.52%) Puppet
13 5 (1.52%) SnapMirror
Vendors
1 57 (17.33%) VMware
2 50 (15.20%) Red Hat
3 49 (14.89%) Oracle
4 36 (10.94%) Microsoft
5 32 (9.73%) IBM
6 26 (7.90%) Google
7 16 (4.86%) Cisco
7 16 (4.86%) Splunk
8 13 (3.95%) ServiceNow
9 10 (3.04%) CyberArk
10 9 (2.74%) Broadcom
10 9 (2.74%) Dell
10 9 (2.74%) HP
11 8 (2.43%) Dynatrace
12 7 (2.13%) Tenable
13 6 (1.82%) NetApp
13 6 (1.82%) Remedy
14 5 (1.52%) Brocade
14 5 (1.52%) Sybase
14 5 (1.52%) Varonis