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 30 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 43 28 37
Rank change year-on-year -15 +9 -10
Contract jobs citing Linux 286 204 202
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 4.66% 6.23% 4.22%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.34% 36.96% 27.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 121 142
10th Percentile £353 £350 £350
25th Percentile £400 £391 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £478
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +15.18% -9.05%
75th Percentile £538 £625 £582
90th Percentile £650 £750 £636
England median daily rate £518 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -5.91% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 3 11
10th Percentile £28.94 £46.44 -
25th Percentile - £55.35 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £75.40 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.37% +57.07% +20.00%
75th Percentile £47.99 £83.18 £55.88
90th Percentile £62.13 £84.74 £65.00
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -2.87% +4.00% -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 727 552 723
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.85% 16.87% 15.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 497 352 491
10th Percentile £143 £163 £165
25th Percentile £203 £209 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £402 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -5.88% -10.53%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £533
90th Percentile £613 £638 £650
England median daily rate £450 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 19 81
10th Percentile £16.15 £15.60 -
25th Percentile £22.29 £16.88 £10.95
Median hourly rate £41.94 £18.21 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +130.38% +13.78% -44.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £19.76 £20.00
90th Percentile £178.75 £49.32 £28.75
England median hourly rate £45.10 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year +82.90% +12.09% -42.11%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 -19 157 £460 -16.36% 27
North West -18 119 £485 -4.88% 34
North East -20 10 £413 -21.43% 17
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 14 (4.90%) Confluence
2 9 (3.15%) CICS
3 8 (2.80%) TPMS
4 5 (1.75%) Apache
5 3 (1.05%) nginx
6 1 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.35%) CMS
6 1 (0.35%) JBoss
6 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 10 (3.50%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.35%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.35%) Odoo
1 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 81 (28.32%) AWS
2 49 (17.13%) Azure
3 45 (15.73%) OpenShift
4 33 (11.54%) GCP
5 24 (8.39%) GitHub
6 13 (4.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 12 (4.20%) Serverless
8 11 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (3.50%) Amazon EC2
9 10 (3.50%) Amazon S3
10 9 (3.15%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (2.80%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (2.45%) Google Workspace
13 6 (2.10%) Amazon EventBridge
14 5 (1.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 5 (1.75%) Amazon SQS
14 5 (1.75%) IaaS
15 4 (1.40%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 60 (20.98%) Firewall
2 22 (7.69%) DNS
2 22 (7.69%) SAN
3 16 (5.59%) Network Security
3 16 (5.59%) TCP/IP
4 14 (4.90%) SSL
5 9 (3.15%) VSAN
6 8 (2.80%) SNMP
6 8 (2.80%) SSH
7 7 (2.45%) NAS
7 7 (2.45%) VPN
8 6 (2.10%) HTTP
9 4 (1.40%) 3GPP
9 4 (1.40%) iSCSI
9 4 (1.40%) RTP
9 4 (1.40%) Wireshark
10 3 (1.05%) DHCP
11 2 (0.70%) Reverse Proxy
11 2 (0.70%) VLAN
12 1 (0.35%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (7.34%) MongoDB
2 20 (6.99%) PostgreSQL
3 14 (4.90%) NoSQL
4 13 (4.55%) SQL Server
5 9 (3.15%) DataStage
5 9 (3.15%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.80%) Relational Database
7 7 (2.45%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (2.10%) DB2
8 6 (2.10%) DynamoDB
9 4 (1.40%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (1.40%) Oracle Database 12c
10 3 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
10 3 (1.05%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.70%) Apache Cassandra
12 1 (0.35%) Azure SQL Database
12 1 (0.35%) InfluxDB
12 1 (0.35%) Oracle Exadata
12 1 (0.35%) SAP HANA
12 1 (0.35%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 34 (11.89%) Jenkins
2 28 (9.79%) JIRA
3 24 (8.39%) GitLab
4 17 (5.94%) Git
5 12 (4.20%) Mockito
6 9 (3.15%) Jaeger
7 4 (1.40%) TeamCity
8 3 (1.05%) Bitbucket
8 3 (1.05%) CircleCI
8 3 (1.05%) Liquibase
9 2 (0.70%) Octopus Deploy
9 2 (0.70%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.35%) Gradle
10 1 (0.35%) Hudson
10 1 (0.35%) JUnit
10 1 (0.35%) Maven
General
1 87 (30.42%) Social Skills
2 69 (24.13%) Finance
3 30 (10.49%) Public Sector
4 28 (9.79%) Banking
5 21 (7.34%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (6.29%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (3.15%) Financial Institution
7 9 (3.15%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.40%) Aviation
9 4 (1.40%) Fire and Rescue
9 4 (1.40%) Legal
9 4 (1.40%) Police
10 3 (1.05%) Investment Banking
10 3 (1.05%) Law
11 2 (0.70%) Advertising
12 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.35%) Military
12 1 (0.35%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.35%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 37 (12.94%) Senior
2 31 (10.84%) Developer
3 21 (7.34%) DevOps Engineer
3 21 (7.34%) Java Developer
4 17 (5.94%) Software Engineer
5 16 (5.59%) Security Engineer
6 15 (5.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 15 (5.24%) Lead
7 14 (4.90%) Platform Engineer
8 13 (4.55%) Linux Engineer
9 12 (4.20%) Analyst
10 10 (3.50%) AWS Engineer
10 10 (3.50%) Data Centre Engineer
11 9 (3.15%) Designer
11 9 (3.15%) Infrastructure Designer
12 8 (2.80%) Administrator
12 8 (2.80%) Full-Stack Engineer
12 8 (2.80%) IT Engineer
12 8 (2.80%) Senior Developer
12 8 (2.80%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (8.39%) Kafka
2 18 (6.29%) Middleware
3 12 (4.20%) Elastic Stack
3 12 (4.20%) JAX-RS
3 12 (4.20%) OpenTelemetry
4 11 (3.85%) ActiveMQ
5 10 (3.50%) .NET
5 10 (3.50%) LDAP
5 10 (3.50%) REST
5 10 (3.50%) YAML
6 9 (3.15%) Spring Boot
7 8 (2.80%) Redfish
8 4 (1.40%) .NET Core
9 3 (1.05%) Flash
9 3 (1.05%) Lambda Expressions
9 3 (1.05%) RESTful
9 3 (1.05%) SOAP
9 3 (1.05%) WebSockets
9 3 (1.05%) XML
10 2 (0.70%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 35 (12.24%) Data Centre
2 23 (8.04%) Cloud Native
3 17 (5.94%) Linux Command Line
3 17 (5.94%) Security Posture
4 16 (5.59%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (4.90%) Hybrid Cloud
6 13 (4.55%) Management Information System
7 12 (4.20%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (4.20%) Mainframe
8 10 (3.50%) Cloud Security Posture
9 9 (3.15%) BYOD
9 9 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
9 9 (3.15%) Replication
9 9 (3.15%) VSAM
10 6 (2.10%) Onboarding
10 6 (2.10%) Product Ownership
11 5 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
11 5 (1.75%) FlexPod
12 4 (1.40%) EMC VMAX
12 4 (1.40%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 109 (38.11%) Windows
2 72 (25.17%) Unix
3 53 (18.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 26 (9.09%) Windows Server
5 24 (8.39%) AIX
6 15 (5.24%) Solaris
7 14 (4.90%) Ubuntu
8 12 (4.20%) Mac OS X
8 12 (4.20%) VMS
9 9 (3.15%) CentOS
10 7 (2.45%) CoreOS
10 7 (2.45%) Oracle Linux
11 5 (1.75%) Data ONTAP
12 4 (1.40%) HPUX
12 4 (1.40%) SUSE
12 4 (1.40%) zOS
13 3 (1.05%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (1.05%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
14 1 (0.35%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (30.07%) CI/CD
2 84 (29.37%) DevOps
3 62 (21.68%) Problem-Solving
4 48 (16.78%) Agile
4 48 (16.78%) Observability
5 46 (16.08%) Infrastructure as Code
6 40 (13.99%) Microservices
7 36 (12.59%) Containerisation
7 36 (12.59%) Migration
8 35 (12.24%) Roadmaps
8 35 (12.24%) Test Automation
9 32 (11.19%) Cybersecurity
10 29 (10.14%) Continuous Improvement
11 28 (9.79%) Root Cause Analysis
12 25 (8.74%) Data Protection
12 25 (8.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 24 (8.39%) Infrastructure Automation
14 23 (8.04%) Platform Engineering
15 22 (7.69%) Capacity Planning
15 22 (7.69%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 108 (37.76%) Python
2 51 (17.83%) Bash
3 50 (17.48%) Java
3 50 (17.48%) SQL
4 42 (14.69%) PowerShell
5 15 (5.24%) Rust
6 14 (4.90%) Shell Script
7 13 (4.55%) Go
7 13 (4.55%) Ruby
8 12 (4.20%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.50%) C#
9 10 (3.50%) Perl
10 9 (3.15%) COBOL
11 8 (2.80%) TypeScript
12 7 (2.45%) PHP
13 4 (1.40%) JCL
13 4 (1.40%) Kotlin
14 3 (1.05%) Delphi
15 2 (0.70%) Bicep
15 2 (0.70%) C
Qualifications
1 49 (17.13%) Security Cleared
2 34 (11.89%) SC Cleared
3 25 (8.74%) Degree
4 22 (7.69%) CISSP
5 15 (5.24%) RHCE
6 13 (4.55%) CompTIA Security+
7 11 (3.85%) AWS Certification
8 8 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.80%) FFIEC
9 7 (2.45%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 6 (2.10%) DV Cleared
10 6 (2.10%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (2.10%) OCP
10 6 (2.10%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (1.75%) Azure Certification
11 5 (1.75%) CISM
11 5 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.75%) MCSA
11 5 (1.75%) MCSE
12 2 (0.70%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.24%) GDPR
2 11 (3.85%) NIST
3 10 (3.50%) PCI DSS
4 9 (3.15%) HIPAA
5 8 (2.80%) GLBA
6 7 (2.45%) SLA
7 5 (1.75%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 5 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (1.40%) GRC
9 3 (1.05%) QA
9 3 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.35%) GxP
10 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 58 (20.28%) Docker
2 45 (15.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (12.59%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (6.29%) Active Directory
4 18 (6.29%) Hyper-V
4 18 (6.29%) vSphere
5 17 (5.94%) KVM
6 15 (5.24%) NFS
7 13 (4.55%) Firmware
8 12 (4.20%) VMware ESXi
9 7 (2.45%) VMware NSX
10 4 (1.40%) Time Sharing Option
11 3 (1.05%) GPFS
12 2 (0.70%) SRDF
13 1 (0.35%) Ceph
13 1 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.35%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.35%) Veritas Volume Manager
13 1 (0.35%) zsh
Systems Management
1 83 (29.02%) Ansible
2 77 (26.92%) Kubernetes
3 74 (25.87%) Terraform
4 37 (12.94%) Grafana
5 28 (9.79%) Prometheus
6 12 (4.20%) Puppet
7 11 (3.85%) vCenter Server
8 8 (2.80%) Dell DRAC
8 8 (2.80%) Kiali
8 8 (2.80%) Packer
8 8 (2.80%) Progress Chef
9 7 (2.45%) PowerCLI
10 6 (2.10%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (2.10%) Nessus
10 6 (2.10%) vRealize
11 5 (1.75%) CASB
11 5 (1.75%) Oracle RMAN
11 5 (1.75%) SnapMirror
11 5 (1.75%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 4 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 55 (19.23%) VMware
2 38 (13.29%) Red Hat
3 37 (12.94%) Splunk
4 32 (11.19%) Microsoft
5 26 (9.09%) Oracle
6 24 (8.39%) IBM
7 19 (6.64%) Google
8 12 (4.20%) ServiceNow
9 11 (3.85%) CyberArk
10 9 (3.15%) Dell
11 8 (2.80%) Broadcom
11 8 (2.80%) Cisco
11 8 (2.80%) HP
11 8 (2.80%) Thales
12 6 (2.10%) NetApp
12 6 (2.10%) Remedy
12 6 (2.10%) Tenable
13 5 (1.75%) Varonis
14 4 (1.40%) Brocade
14 4 (1.40%) Dynatrace