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 10 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 39 31 38
Rank change year-on-year -8 +7 -17
Contract jobs citing Linux 298 188 201
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 5.41% 5.80% 4.07%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.85% 34.88% 27.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 113 131
10th Percentile £348 £356 £313
25th Percentile £400 £409 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £496 £550 £480
Median % change year-on-year -9.82% +14.58% -12.73%
75th Percentile £550 £623 £553
90th Percentile £680 £750 £623
England median daily rate £513 £550 £540
% change year-on-year -6.82% +1.85% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 11
10th Percentile - £46.17 -
25th Percentile - £54.67 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £69.59 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.73% +44.98% +16.94%
75th Percentile £66.18 £81.89 £55.88
90th Percentile £74.26 £84.22 £63.75
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 767 539 738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 13.92% 16.62% 14.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 532 343 476
10th Percentile £135 £163 £163
25th Percentile £185 £233 £248
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £369 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year -7.75% - -15.79%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £498
90th Percentile £613 £625 £582
England median daily rate £450 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 17 81
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.22 -
25th Percentile £20.63 £16.25 £10.95
Median hourly rate £25.15 £22.09 £17.29
Median % change year-on-year +13.85% +27.80% -41.01%
75th Percentile £51.60 £29.00 £23.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.14 £48.00
England median hourly rate £22.81 £34.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year -33.88% +53.33% -15.09%

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 10 March 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 10 March 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 10 March 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 -14 161 £482 -12.36% 36
North West -6 128 £492 -6.29% 65
North East -17 12 £550 +12.82% 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 10 (3.36%) TPMS
2 9 (3.02%) Confluence
3 8 (2.68%) CICS
4 7 (2.35%) Apache
5 6 (2.01%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (2.01%) SharePoint
6 5 (1.68%) OpenStack
7 3 (1.01%) JBoss
7 3 (1.01%) nginx
8 2 (0.67%) IIS
8 2 (0.67%) iPlanet
8 2 (0.67%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.67%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 13 (4.36%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.34%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 96 (32.21%) AWS
2 54 (18.12%) GCP
3 47 (15.77%) Azure
4 44 (14.77%) OpenShift
5 27 (9.06%) Serverless
6 26 (8.72%) GitHub
7 14 (4.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 13 (4.36%) Amazon EC2
9 12 (4.03%) AWS CloudFormation
9 12 (4.03%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (3.69%) Google Workspace
11 10 (3.36%) Entra ID
12 9 (3.02%) Amazon S3
12 9 (3.02%) AWS KMS
12 9 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
13 7 (2.35%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (2.35%) Amazon EKS
14 6 (2.01%) IaaS
14 6 (2.01%) SaaS
15 5 (1.68%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 83 (27.85%) Firewall
2 21 (7.05%) Network Security
3 20 (6.71%) DNS
4 18 (6.04%) TCP/IP
5 16 (5.37%) SSL
6 15 (5.03%) SAN
7 14 (4.70%) SNMP
8 11 (3.69%) VPN
9 10 (3.36%) SSH
10 9 (3.02%) VLAN
11 7 (2.35%) BGP
12 6 (2.01%) Software-Defined Networking
12 6 (2.01%) WebEx
13 5 (1.68%) NAS
14 4 (1.34%) DHCP
14 4 (1.34%) HTTP
15 3 (1.01%) iSCSI
15 3 (1.01%) Kerberos
15 3 (1.01%) VSAN
16 2 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (10.40%) PostgreSQL
2 24 (8.05%) NoSQL
3 19 (6.38%) MongoDB
4 12 (4.03%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.36%) Oracle Database
6 8 (2.68%) DataStage
6 8 (2.68%) Relational Database
7 7 (2.35%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (2.01%) DB2
9 5 (1.68%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (1.01%) Apache Cassandra
10 3 (1.01%) DynamoDB
10 3 (1.01%) MySQL
11 2 (0.67%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.67%) RDBMS
12 1 (0.34%) Data Lake
12 1 (0.34%) DocumentDB
12 1 (0.34%) Oracle Exadata
12 1 (0.34%) Oracle Reports
12 1 (0.34%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 60 (20.13%) Jenkins
2 48 (16.11%) GitLab
3 23 (7.72%) JIRA
4 20 (6.71%) Git
5 12 (4.03%) Liquibase
5 12 (4.03%) Mockito
6 8 (2.68%) Jaeger
7 7 (2.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (2.01%) CircleCI
9 5 (1.68%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.67%) Bitbucket Server
10 2 (0.67%) CA Release Automation
10 2 (0.67%) Gradle
10 2 (0.67%) Maven
10 2 (0.67%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.34%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.34%) JUnit
General
1 93 (31.21%) Social Skills
2 78 (26.17%) Finance
3 41 (13.76%) Banking
4 35 (11.74%) Public Sector
5 22 (7.38%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (7.38%) Documentation Skills
5 22 (7.38%) Financial Institution
6 9 (3.02%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.68%) Legal
8 6 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.01%) Law
9 3 (1.01%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.67%) Advertising
10 2 (0.67%) Games
10 2 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
11 1 (0.34%) Military
11 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.34%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 39 (13.09%) Senior
2 31 (10.40%) Developer
3 30 (10.07%) DevOps Engineer
4 27 (9.06%) Platform Engineer
5 24 (8.05%) Software Engineer
6 22 (7.38%) Cloud Engineer
7 20 (6.71%) Java Developer
8 18 (6.04%) Lead
9 17 (5.70%) GCP Engineer
10 16 (5.37%) AWS Engineer
10 16 (5.37%) Security Engineer
11 15 (5.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 12 (4.03%) Administrator
13 11 (3.69%) IT Engineer
13 11 (3.69%) IT Support
13 11 (3.69%) IT Support Engineer
13 11 (3.69%) Support Engineer
14 10 (3.36%) Cryptography Engineer
14 10 (3.36%) Senior DevOps
14 10 (3.36%) Senior DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (10.74%) Elastic Stack
2 28 (9.40%) REST
3 23 (7.72%) Kafka
4 19 (6.38%) RESTful
5 16 (5.37%) Middleware
6 12 (4.03%) JAX-RS
6 12 (4.03%) OpenTelemetry
7 11 (3.69%) ActiveMQ
8 10 (3.36%) Spring Boot
9 9 (3.02%) LDAP
9 9 (3.02%) YAML
10 6 (2.01%) XMPP
11 4 (1.34%) Node.js
11 4 (1.34%) Redfish
11 4 (1.34%) Spring
12 3 (1.01%) .NET
12 3 (1.01%) Lambda Expressions
12 3 (1.01%) OAuth
12 3 (1.01%) OpenID
12 3 (1.01%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 31 (10.40%) Cloud Native
2 30 (10.07%) Data Centre
2 30 (10.07%) Distributed Systems
3 22 (7.38%) Public Cloud
4 18 (6.04%) Product Ownership
5 16 (5.37%) Security Posture
6 14 (4.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 12 (4.03%) Linux Command Line
7 12 (4.03%) Management Information System
8 10 (3.36%) Onboarding
9 9 (3.02%) Cloud Security Posture
10 8 (2.68%) BYOD
10 8 (2.68%) Mainframe
10 8 (2.68%) VSAM
11 6 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.68%) FlexPod
12 5 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (1.68%) NHS
13 4 (1.34%) Cyber Threat
13 4 (1.34%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 117 (39.26%) Windows
2 66 (22.15%) Unix
3 53 (17.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 33 (11.07%) Windows Server
5 15 (5.03%) AIX
6 14 (4.70%) Mac OS X
7 11 (3.69%) Ubuntu
8 10 (3.36%) CentOS
8 10 (3.36%) Solaris
9 8 (2.68%) VMS
10 5 (1.68%) CoreOS
10 5 (1.68%) Data ONTAP
11 3 (1.01%) Amazon Linux
11 3 (1.01%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (39.26%) DevOps
2 116 (38.93%) CI/CD
3 74 (24.83%) Containerisation
4 73 (24.50%) Problem-Solving
5 71 (23.83%) Infrastructure as Code
6 56 (18.79%) Observability
7 51 (17.11%) Cybersecurity
7 51 (17.11%) Microservices
8 49 (16.44%) Agile
9 41 (13.76%) Infrastructure Automation
9 41 (13.76%) Test Automation
10 35 (11.74%) Root Cause Analysis
11 32 (10.74%) Platform Engineering
11 32 (10.74%) Roadmaps
12 31 (10.40%) Software Engineering
13 30 (10.07%) Computer Science
13 30 (10.07%) Cryptography
14 29 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
14 29 (9.73%) Data Security
15 27 (9.06%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 141 (47.32%) Python
2 75 (25.17%) Bash
3 53 (17.79%) Java
4 52 (17.45%) PowerShell
5 37 (12.42%) SQL
6 28 (9.40%) Go
7 24 (8.05%) Perl
8 15 (5.03%) Ruby
8 15 (5.03%) Rust
8 15 (5.03%) Shell Script
9 8 (2.68%) COBOL
9 8 (2.68%) JavaScript
9 8 (2.68%) PHP
9 8 (2.68%) TypeScript
10 5 (1.68%) Groovy
11 4 (1.34%) C#
12 3 (1.01%) Delphi
13 2 (0.67%) C
13 2 (0.67%) Search Processing Language
14 1 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 67 (22.48%) Security Cleared
2 48 (16.11%) SC Cleared
3 37 (12.42%) Degree
4 18 (6.04%) Master's Degree
5 17 (5.70%) AWS Certification
5 17 (5.70%) CISSP
5 17 (5.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (3.36%) CCNA
6 10 (3.36%) CCNP
6 10 (3.36%) Cisco Certification
6 10 (3.36%) CompTIA Security+
6 10 (3.36%) FFIEC
7 9 (3.02%) CCDP
7 9 (3.02%) RHCE
8 8 (2.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 7 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (2.01%) CISM
10 6 (2.01%) OCP
10 6 (2.01%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.37%) GDPR
2 11 (3.69%) NIST
3 10 (3.36%) GLBA
3 10 (3.36%) PCI DSS
4 7 (2.35%) SLA
5 5 (1.68%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.34%) GxP
8 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.34%) QA
8 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 88 (29.53%) Docker
2 43 (14.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (8.39%) Active Directory
4 23 (7.72%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (6.04%) vSphere
6 15 (5.03%) KVM
7 14 (4.70%) Hyper-V
8 8 (2.68%) Firmware
9 7 (2.35%) NFS
10 5 (1.68%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.67%) SRDF
11 2 (0.67%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 2 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.34%) Ceph
12 1 (0.34%) GPFS
12 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.34%) QEMU
12 1 (0.34%) VMware NSX
12 1 (0.34%) zsh
Systems Management
1 116 (38.93%) Kubernetes
2 99 (33.22%) Terraform
3 91 (30.54%) Ansible
4 56 (18.79%) Grafana
5 47 (15.77%) Prometheus
6 13 (4.36%) Puppet
7 11 (3.69%) Progress Chef
8 9 (3.02%) vCenter Server
9 8 (2.68%) Kiali
10 7 (2.35%) Packer
11 6 (2.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (2.01%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (2.01%) Single Sign-On
12 5 (1.68%) CASB
12 5 (1.68%) EMC NetWorker
12 5 (1.68%) Nessus
12 5 (1.68%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.68%) SnapMirror
13 4 (1.34%) NetBackup
13 4 (1.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 59 (19.80%) Splunk
2 58 (19.46%) VMware
3 41 (13.76%) Red Hat
4 40 (13.42%) Microsoft
5 34 (11.41%) Google
6 23 (7.72%) Oracle
7 17 (5.70%) IBM
8 16 (5.37%) Cisco
9 10 (3.36%) Citrix
9 10 (3.36%) Thales
10 9 (3.02%) CyberArk
11 8 (2.68%) ServiceNow
12 7 (2.35%) AppDynamics
12 7 (2.35%) NetApp
13 6 (2.01%) Remedy
14 5 (1.68%) Broadcom
14 5 (1.68%) F5
14 5 (1.68%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.68%) Tenable
15 4 (1.34%) Varonis