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 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 38 36 45
Rank change year-on-year -2 +9 -26
Contract jobs citing Linux 278 168 191
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 5.47% 5.00% 3.82%
As % of the Operating Systems category 36.82% 31.05% 26.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 202 96 118
10th Percentile £319 £350 £317
25th Percentile £400 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £550 £495
Median % change year-on-year -13.09% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £550 £628 £583
90th Percentile £688 £744 £623
England median daily rate £508 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.64% - -6.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 11
10th Percentile - £43.10 -
25th Percentile - £47.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £63.79 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.25% +32.89% +7.05%
75th Percentile - £80.59 -
90th Percentile £61.33 £83.70 £63.75
England median hourly rate £63.14 £65.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year -3.98% +9.58% -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 755 541 713
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 14.85% 16.09% 14.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 540 321 470
10th Percentile £141 £170 £160
25th Percentile £190 £230 £233
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £375 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year -6.25% - -11.11%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £506
90th Percentile £613 £638 £588
England median daily rate £450 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -11.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 22 63
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.30
25th Percentile £18.87 £16.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £22.50 £18.13 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +24.14% +2.29% -31.85%
75th Percentile £41.94 £27.80 £24.50
90th Percentile £68.70 £66.46 £48.00
England median hourly rate £22.54 £47.00 £25.06
% change year-on-year -52.05% +87.57% -3.63%

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 6 February 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 6 February 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 6 February 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 0 169 £500 -14.16% 31
North West -18 101 £452 -16.00% 85
North East -16 13 £550 +12.82% 19
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 16 (5.76%) Apache
2 11 (3.96%) TPMS
3 9 (3.24%) JBoss
4 7 (2.52%) IIS
4 7 (2.52%) iPlanet
4 7 (2.52%) WebSphere
4 7 (2.52%) WebSphere Application Server
5 6 (2.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (2.16%) OpenStack
5 6 (2.16%) SharePoint
6 3 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (1.08%) Apache Spark
6 3 (1.08%) CICS
7 2 (0.72%) nginx
7 2 (0.72%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.36%) CMS
8 1 (0.36%) Confluence
8 1 (0.36%) Documentum
8 1 (0.36%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 11 (3.96%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.36%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 93 (33.45%) AWS
2 59 (21.22%) GCP
3 42 (15.11%) Azure
4 40 (14.39%) OpenShift
5 33 (11.87%) Serverless
6 28 (10.07%) GitHub
7 16 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
8 14 (5.04%) AWS CloudFormation
9 13 (4.68%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (3.96%) Google Workspace
11 10 (3.60%) Entra ID
11 10 (3.60%) SaaS
12 9 (3.24%) AWS KMS
12 9 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.24%) IaaS
12 9 (3.24%) PaaS
13 8 (2.88%) Amazon S3
13 8 (2.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 7 (2.52%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 72 (25.90%) Firewall
2 19 (6.83%) Network Security
3 15 (5.40%) SNMP
3 15 (5.40%) SSL
4 14 (5.04%) DNS
4 14 (5.04%) TCP/IP
5 11 (3.96%) SSH
6 10 (3.60%) VPN
7 8 (2.88%) Kerberos
8 7 (2.52%) VLAN
9 6 (2.16%) BGP
9 6 (2.16%) Software-Defined Networking
9 6 (2.16%) WebEx
10 4 (1.44%) DHCP
10 4 (1.44%) HTTP
10 4 (1.44%) SAN
11 2 (0.72%) HTTPS
11 2 (0.72%) NAS
11 2 (0.72%) Reverse Proxy
11 2 (0.72%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (11.15%) PostgreSQL
2 29 (10.43%) NoSQL
3 23 (8.27%) MongoDB
4 13 (4.68%) Oracle Database
4 13 (4.68%) SQL Server
5 10 (3.60%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.80%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.80%) Apache Cassandra
6 5 (1.80%) MySQL
7 3 (1.08%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.08%) DataStage
7 3 (1.08%) DB2
7 3 (1.08%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.08%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.08%) HBase
8 2 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
9 1 (0.36%) DocumentDB
9 1 (0.36%) GIS
9 1 (0.36%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.36%) Redis
Development Applications
1 69 (24.82%) Jenkins
2 52 (18.71%) GitLab
3 23 (8.27%) Git
4 18 (6.47%) Mockito
5 16 (5.76%) Liquibase
6 13 (4.68%) JIRA
7 11 (3.96%) Sonatype Nexus
8 9 (3.24%) Jaeger
9 7 (2.52%) Bitbucket Server
9 7 (2.52%) CA Release Automation
9 7 (2.52%) CircleCI
10 4 (1.44%) Bitbucket
11 2 (0.72%) Gradle
11 2 (0.72%) Maven
11 2 (0.72%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.36%) Artifactory
12 1 (0.36%) JUnit
General
1 86 (30.94%) Social Skills
2 69 (24.82%) Finance
3 43 (15.47%) Banking
4 32 (11.51%) Public Sector
5 27 (9.71%) Financial Institution
6 23 (8.27%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (7.91%) Analytical Skills
8 7 (2.52%) Legal
9 4 (1.44%) Games
9 4 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.08%) Law
11 2 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.72%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.36%) Advertising
12 1 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.36%) Private Banking
12 1 (0.36%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 52 (18.71%) Senior
2 41 (14.75%) Developer
3 30 (10.79%) Platform Engineer
4 29 (10.43%) Java Developer
5 28 (10.07%) DevOps Engineer
6 23 (8.27%) Software Engineer
7 21 (7.55%) Lead
8 19 (6.83%) AWS Engineer
8 19 (6.83%) Cloud Engineer
9 16 (5.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (5.76%) Senior Developer
9 16 (5.76%) Senior Java Developer
10 15 (5.40%) GCP Engineer
11 12 (4.32%) Administrator
12 11 (3.96%) Cryptography Engineer
12 11 (3.96%) IT Engineer
12 11 (3.96%) IT Support
12 11 (3.96%) IT Support Engineer
12 11 (3.96%) Support Engineer
13 10 (3.60%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (12.95%) Elastic Stack
2 33 (11.87%) REST
3 30 (10.79%) Kafka
4 26 (9.35%) RESTful
5 18 (6.47%) ActiveMQ
5 18 (6.47%) JAX-RS
6 13 (4.68%) OpenTelemetry
7 12 (4.32%) Middleware
7 12 (4.32%) Spring Boot
8 9 (3.24%) Node.js
8 9 (3.24%) OAuth
8 9 (3.24%) YAML
9 8 (2.88%) LDAP
10 7 (2.52%) OpenID
10 7 (2.52%) SAML
11 6 (2.16%) Spring
11 6 (2.16%) XMPP
12 5 (1.80%) AngularJS
13 3 (1.08%) Spring Batch
13 3 (1.08%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 36 (12.95%) Distributed Systems
2 26 (9.35%) Cloud Native
3 25 (8.99%) Public Cloud
4 19 (6.83%) Data Centre
5 16 (5.76%) Product Ownership
6 15 (5.40%) Onboarding
7 12 (4.32%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (2.52%) Management Information System
9 6 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.16%) NHS
10 5 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (1.44%) Cyber Threat
12 3 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.08%) BYOD
12 3 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
12 3 (1.08%) Mainframe
12 3 (1.08%) PKI
12 3 (1.08%) Security Posture
12 3 (1.08%) VSAM
13 2 (0.72%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 101 (36.33%) Windows
2 63 (22.66%) Unix
3 38 (13.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 31 (11.15%) Windows Server
5 23 (8.27%) Mac OS X
6 9 (3.24%) CentOS
6 9 (3.24%) Ubuntu
7 6 (2.16%) AIX
8 5 (1.80%) Solaris
8 5 (1.80%) VMS
9 3 (1.08%) Amazon Linux
10 2 (0.72%) CoreOS
10 2 (0.72%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.72%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (43.88%) CI/CD
2 115 (41.37%) DevOps
3 85 (30.58%) Containerisation
4 69 (24.82%) Infrastructure as Code
4 69 (24.82%) Problem-Solving
5 68 (24.46%) Microservices
6 56 (20.14%) Cybersecurity
6 56 (20.14%) Observability
7 55 (19.78%) Agile
8 42 (15.11%) Root Cause Analysis
9 41 (14.75%) Test Automation
10 39 (14.03%) Infrastructure Automation
11 35 (12.59%) Cryptography
11 35 (12.59%) Platform Engineering
12 34 (12.23%) Computer Science
13 32 (11.51%) Data Security
14 31 (11.15%) High Availability
15 29 (10.43%) Software Engineering
16 28 (10.07%) Task Automation
17 27 (9.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 138 (49.64%) Python
2 75 (26.98%) Bash
3 60 (21.58%) Java
4 47 (16.91%) PowerShell
5 35 (12.59%) Go
6 31 (11.15%) SQL
7 23 (8.27%) Perl
8 18 (6.47%) Shell Script
9 15 (5.40%) Ruby
10 12 (4.32%) PHP
10 12 (4.32%) Rust
11 10 (3.60%) Groovy
12 4 (1.44%) C#
13 3 (1.08%) COBOL
13 3 (1.08%) Delphi
13 3 (1.08%) JavaScript
13 3 (1.08%) Search Processing Language
13 3 (1.08%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.72%) C
14 2 (0.72%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 68 (24.46%) Security Cleared
2 53 (19.06%) SC Cleared
3 37 (13.31%) Degree
4 23 (8.27%) Computer Science Degree
4 23 (8.27%) Master's Degree
5 16 (5.76%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (5.40%) AWS Certification
7 11 (3.96%) FFIEC
8 9 (3.24%) RHCE
9 8 (2.88%) CCDP
9 8 (2.88%) CCNA
9 8 (2.88%) CCNP
9 8 (2.88%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (2.16%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 5 (1.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 5 (1.80%) CISM
11 5 (1.80%) CISSP
12 4 (1.44%) AWS Certified Developer
12 4 (1.44%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.72%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.68%) GDPR
2 11 (3.96%) GLBA
2 11 (3.96%) NIST
2 11 (3.96%) PCI DSS
3 7 (2.52%) SLA
4 3 (1.08%) HIPAA
4 3 (1.08%) SOC 2
5 2 (0.72%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 98 (35.25%) Docker
2 35 (12.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 24 (8.63%) Active Directory
4 14 (5.04%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (4.32%) vSphere
6 10 (3.60%) KVM
7 8 (2.88%) Hyper-V
8 6 (2.16%) Tivoli Directory Server
9 3 (1.08%) Firmware
9 3 (1.08%) HDFS
9 3 (1.08%) NFS
9 3 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.72%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.36%) Ceph
11 1 (0.36%) QEMU
11 1 (0.36%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 111 (39.93%) Kubernetes
2 90 (32.37%) Terraform
3 84 (30.22%) Ansible
4 65 (23.38%) Grafana
5 53 (19.06%) Prometheus
6 13 (4.68%) Puppet
7 10 (3.60%) Progress Chef
8 9 (3.24%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (2.88%) CA Single Sign-On
9 8 (2.88%) Kiali
10 7 (2.52%) CA Wily
10 7 (2.52%) NetBackup
11 6 (2.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (2.16%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (2.16%) Tivoli
12 5 (1.80%) EMC NetWorker
12 5 (1.80%) Packer
12 5 (1.80%) vCenter Server
13 4 (1.44%) SCCM
14 3 (1.08%) IBM BigFix
Vendors
1 66 (23.74%) Splunk
2 47 (16.91%) VMware
3 38 (13.67%) Microsoft
4 36 (12.95%) Oracle
5 34 (12.23%) Red Hat
6 33 (11.87%) Google
7 17 (6.12%) AppDynamics
8 14 (5.04%) IBM
9 11 (3.96%) Cisco
10 10 (3.60%) Thales
11 9 (3.24%) Citrix
12 7 (2.52%) Broadcom
12 7 (2.52%) CyberArk
13 6 (2.16%) Veritas
14 5 (1.80%) F5
14 5 (1.80%) Palo Alto
15 4 (1.44%) Juniper
15 4 (1.44%) NetApp
15 4 (1.44%) ServiceNow
16 2 (0.72%) EMC