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 31 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 30 48
Rank change year-on-year -26 +18 0
Contract jobs citing Linux 287 252 162
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 3.80% 6.27% 3.88%
As % of the Operating Systems category 33.73% 38.95% 30.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 175 170 109
10th Percentile £358 £319 £350
25th Percentile £407 £368 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -9.09% +4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £610 £622
90th Percentile £650 £689 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £543
% change year-on-year - -3.27% -5.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 4
10th Percentile £18.90 - -
25th Percentile £23.36 - £47.00
Median hourly rate £36.67 £70.00 £50.75
Median % change year-on-year -47.61% +37.93% +91.51%
75th Percentile £49.06 - £62.33
90th Percentile £49.63 - £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 851 647 530
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.25% 16.11% 12.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 572 433 341
10th Percentile £181 £178 £188
25th Percentile £237 £270 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £421 £400 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.19% -11.11% +2.27%
75th Percentile £525 £538 £588
90th Percentile £615 £625 £800
England median daily rate £465 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 24 55
10th Percentile £14.40 £13.00 £10.95
25th Percentile £16.90 £15.93 £11.01
Median hourly rate £19.00 £18.10 £16.81
Median % change year-on-year +4.96% +7.72% -21.14%
75th Percentile £48.75 £18.87 £20.75
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.77 £26.92
England median hourly rate £32.50 £24.00 £39.00
% change year-on-year +35.42% -38.46% -8.24%

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 31 August 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 31 August 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 31 August 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 -22 144 £485 +21.25% 84
Yorkshire -28 124 £500 -4.76% 42
North East -17 26 £470 -18.26% 25
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 15 (5.23%) Confluence
2 4 (1.39%) Apache
2 4 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.05%) OpenStack
3 3 (1.05%) WebSphere
4 2 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.70%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.70%) nginx
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.70%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.35%) CICS
5 1 (0.35%) CMS
5 1 (0.35%) SAS
5 1 (0.35%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (3.14%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.35%) Odoo
2 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 100 (34.84%) AWS
2 82 (28.57%) Azure
3 47 (16.38%) GCP
4 28 (9.76%) GitHub
5 22 (7.67%) OpenShift
6 19 (6.62%) Azure DevOps
7 18 (6.27%) OCI
8 15 (5.23%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 13 (4.53%) Amazon EKS
10 12 (4.18%) Amazon ECS
10 12 (4.18%) AWS CloudFormation
10 12 (4.18%) Serverless
10 12 (4.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 10 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (3.48%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (3.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 8 (2.79%) Azure Monitor
13 8 (2.79%) Entra ID
14 7 (2.44%) AWS KMS
14 7 (2.44%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 26 (9.06%) Firewall
2 19 (6.62%) SAN
3 17 (5.92%) DNS
4 15 (5.23%) Network Security
5 9 (3.14%) VSAN
6 8 (2.79%) TCP/IP
7 6 (2.09%) 3GPP
7 6 (2.09%) DHCP
7 6 (2.09%) NAS
7 6 (2.09%) RTP
7 6 (2.09%) Wireshark
8 5 (1.74%) iSCSI
8 5 (1.74%) SD-WAN
8 5 (1.74%) VPN
8 5 (1.74%) WAN
8 5 (1.74%) Wireless
9 3 (1.05%) FTP
9 3 (1.05%) HTTP
9 3 (1.05%) SSL
9 3 (1.05%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.76%) Oracle Database
2 17 (5.92%) RDBMS
2 17 (5.92%) Relational Database
3 15 (5.23%) Oracle Exadata
4 12 (4.18%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.18%) NoSQL
5 8 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
6 7 (2.44%) SQL Server
7 6 (2.09%) DynamoDB
7 6 (2.09%) Elasticsearch
7 6 (2.09%) Oracle Database 12c
8 5 (1.74%) Sybase ASE
9 4 (1.39%) Data Lake
10 3 (1.05%) Amazon Aurora
10 3 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (1.05%) Big Data
10 3 (1.05%) BusinessObjects
10 3 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
10 3 (1.05%) Power BI
11 2 (0.70%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 35 (12.20%) Git
2 26 (9.06%) GitLab
3 25 (8.71%) JIRA
4 17 (5.92%) Jenkins
5 10 (3.48%) Mockito
6 6 (2.09%) TeamCity
7 5 (1.74%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (1.39%) Cucumber
9 3 (1.05%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.05%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.70%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.70%) Gatling
10 2 (0.70%) Gradle
10 2 (0.70%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.70%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.70%) Toad
11 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.35%) Hudson
11 1 (0.35%) Jaeger
General
1 61 (21.25%) Social Skills
2 56 (19.51%) Finance
3 29 (10.10%) Banking
4 24 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 23 (8.01%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (3.48%) Legal
7 5 (1.74%) Aviation
7 5 (1.74%) Fire and Rescue
7 5 (1.74%) Military
7 5 (1.74%) Police
8 4 (1.39%) Corporate Banking
8 4 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.39%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.39%) Law
8 4 (1.39%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.35%) Advertising
10 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 44 (15.33%) Senior
2 33 (11.50%) Linux Engineer
3 29 (10.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 25 (8.71%) Developer
5 21 (7.32%) Security Engineer
6 20 (6.97%) DevOps Engineer
7 19 (6.62%) Consultant
8 16 (5.57%) Cloud Engineer
8 16 (5.57%) DBA
8 16 (5.57%) Unix Engineer
9 14 (4.88%) Java Developer
10 13 (4.53%) Lead
11 11 (3.83%) AWS Engineer
11 11 (3.83%) Security Consultant
12 10 (3.48%) Cloud Security Engineer
12 10 (3.48%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.48%) Senior Developer
12 10 (3.48%) Software Engineer
12 10 (3.48%) Support Engineer
12 10 (3.48%) Unix Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (34.15%) Terraform
2 15 (5.23%) Kafka
2 15 (5.23%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 13 (4.53%) .NET
4 11 (3.83%) REST
5 10 (3.48%) ActiveMQ
5 10 (3.48%) JAX-RS
6 8 (2.79%) JSON
6 8 (2.79%) Redfish
6 8 (2.79%) YAML
7 7 (2.44%) Middleware
8 6 (2.09%) .NET Core
8 6 (2.09%) ARM Templates
8 6 (2.09%) RabbitMQ
9 5 (1.74%) LDAP
10 4 (1.39%) Django
10 4 (1.39%) Flash
10 4 (1.39%) Node.js
10 4 (1.39%) RESTful
10 4 (1.39%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 32 (11.15%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.41%) Data Centre
3 22 (7.67%) Linux Command Line
4 19 (6.62%) Replication
5 17 (5.92%) Security Posture
6 16 (5.57%) PKI
7 15 (5.23%) Public Cloud
8 14 (4.88%) Legacy Systems
9 12 (4.18%) Distributed Systems
9 12 (4.18%) Management Information System
10 11 (3.83%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (3.83%) Hybrid Cloud
11 9 (3.14%) Mainframe
12 8 (2.79%) Enterprise Cloud
13 6 (2.09%) Enterprise Storage
13 6 (2.09%) Onboarding
14 5 (1.74%) Cloud Security Posture
14 5 (1.74%) Private Cloud
14 5 (1.74%) Robotics
15 4 (1.39%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 91 (31.71%) Windows
2 67 (23.34%) Unix
3 65 (22.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 27 (9.41%) AIX
5 25 (8.71%) Windows Server
6 20 (6.97%) Solaris
7 9 (3.14%) Ubuntu
8 8 (2.79%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (2.44%) CentOS
9 7 (2.44%) VMS
10 5 (1.74%) HPUX
10 5 (1.74%) Mac OS X
10 5 (1.74%) SUSE
10 5 (1.74%) zOS
11 3 (1.05%) CoreOS
12 2 (0.70%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.70%) OpenVMS
12 2 (0.70%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
13 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (34.15%) CI/CD
2 87 (30.31%) Infrastructure as Code
3 74 (25.78%) DevOps
4 65 (22.65%) Agile
5 49 (17.07%) Continuous Improvement
5 49 (17.07%) Migration
6 48 (16.72%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 47 (16.38%) Observability
8 42 (14.63%) High Availability
9 40 (13.94%) Change Management
10 37 (12.89%) Infrastructure Automation
11 35 (12.20%) Cloud Security
12 34 (11.85%) Performance Tuning
13 31 (10.80%) Disaster Recovery
13 31 (10.80%) ITIL
13 31 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
14 30 (10.45%) Platform Engineering
14 30 (10.45%) Runbook
14 30 (10.45%) Test Automation
15 29 (10.10%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 110 (38.33%) Python
2 76 (26.48%) Bash
3 75 (26.13%) PowerShell
4 45 (15.68%) Java
5 43 (14.98%) SQL
6 15 (5.23%) Bicep
7 14 (4.88%) Shell Script
8 12 (4.18%) C#
9 10 (3.48%) JavaScript
10 7 (2.44%) Go
11 5 (1.74%) JCL
12 4 (1.39%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.39%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (1.39%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (1.05%) Rust
13 3 (1.05%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.70%) DCL
14 2 (0.70%) Groovy
14 2 (0.70%) Perl
14 2 (0.70%) REXX
Qualifications
1 55 (19.16%) Security Cleared
2 44 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 35 (12.20%) Degree
4 28 (9.76%) CISSP
5 18 (6.27%) Azure Certification
6 17 (5.92%) AWS Certification
7 7 (2.44%) CompTIA Security+
8 6 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (2.09%) CISM
8 6 (2.09%) RHCE
9 5 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
10 4 (1.39%) CEH
10 4 (1.39%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (1.39%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (1.05%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (1.05%) ITIL Certification
11 3 (1.05%) Network+ Certification
11 3 (1.05%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (1.74%) HIPAA
2 5 (1.74%) NIST
3 4 (1.39%) GRC
3 4 (1.39%) SLA
4 3 (1.05%) PCI DSS
4 3 (1.05%) QA
4 3 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.35%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.35%) GDPR
5 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 49 (17.07%) Docker
2 41 (14.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (10.80%) Virtual Machines
4 21 (7.32%) Active Directory
5 18 (6.27%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (5.92%) vSphere
7 14 (4.88%) NFS
7 14 (4.88%) VMware ESXi
8 13 (4.53%) KVM
9 12 (4.18%) Firmware
10 8 (2.79%) Hyper-V
10 8 (2.79%) VMware NSX
11 5 (1.74%) Time Sharing Option
12 4 (1.39%) Ceph
12 4 (1.39%) GPFS
13 3 (1.05%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 1 (0.35%) NetIQ eDirectory
14 1 (0.35%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.35%) zsh
Systems Management
1 85 (29.62%) Ansible
2 74 (25.78%) Kubernetes
3 23 (8.01%) Oracle RMAN
3 23 (8.01%) Prometheus
4 21 (7.32%) Grafana
5 20 (6.97%) Progress Chef
6 19 (6.62%) Data Guard
7 8 (2.79%) Dell DRAC
7 8 (2.79%) Tivoli Storage Manager
7 8 (2.79%) vCenter Server
8 7 (2.44%) Packer
8 7 (2.44%) PowerCLI
8 7 (2.44%) vRealize
9 6 (2.09%) Istio
10 5 (1.74%) Argo
10 5 (1.74%) vMotion
11 4 (1.39%) Oracle ZFS
11 4 (1.39%) Tivoli
12 3 (1.05%) Nagios
12 3 (1.05%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 51 (17.77%) Oracle
2 44 (15.33%) VMware
3 40 (13.94%) Red Hat
4 39 (13.59%) Microsoft
5 21 (7.32%) Google
6 18 (6.27%) IBM
7 17 (5.92%) Cisco
7 17 (5.92%) Splunk
8 11 (3.83%) ServiceNow
9 10 (3.48%) Dell
10 7 (2.44%) Broadcom
10 7 (2.44%) Dynatrace
10 7 (2.44%) HP
11 5 (1.74%) Brocade
11 5 (1.74%) Databricks
11 5 (1.74%) Juniper
11 5 (1.74%) Sybase
12 4 (1.39%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.39%) SAP
13 3 (1.05%) Veritas