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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 33 39
Rank change year-on-year -22 +6 +5
Contract jobs citing Linux 298 227 174
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 3.98% 5.70% 4.19%
As % of the Operating Systems category 34.94% 37.52% 32.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 155 120
10th Percentile £358 £324 £375
25th Percentile £413 £368 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £615 £610 £620
90th Percentile £650 £684 £676
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 3
10th Percentile £18.90 - £47.35
25th Percentile £23.36 - £47.88
Median hourly rate £36.67 £70.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -47.61% +33.33% +98.11%
75th Percentile £49.06 - £68.42
90th Percentile £49.63 - £75.72
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 853 605 541
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 11.39% 15.19% 13.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 574 400 351
10th Percentile £181 £175 £190
25th Percentile £238 £263 £316
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £470
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -14.89% +6.82%
75th Percentile £525 £538 £588
90th Percentile £616 £621 £788
England median daily rate £474 £450 £490
% change year-on-year +5.22% -8.16% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 21 58
10th Percentile £16.62 £13.00 -
25th Percentile £17.25 £14.20 £10.95
Median hourly rate £21.32 £18.00 £14.84
Median % change year-on-year +18.44% +21.33% -31.00%
75th Percentile £27.67 £18.87 £19.07
90th Percentile £178.75 £19.78 £24.18
England median hourly rate £34.13 £23.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +48.39% -29.23% -15.52%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -17 150 £500 +24.69% 87
Yorkshire -21 128 £500 -4.76% 30
North East -15 27 £490 -14.78% 28
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 20 (6.71%) Confluence
2 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (1.01%) Apache
3 3 (1.01%) CICS
3 3 (1.01%) OpenStack
4 2 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.67%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.34%) CMS
5 1 (0.34%) nginx
5 1 (0.34%) SAS
5 1 (0.34%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.34%) WebSphere
Applications
1 9 (3.02%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.34%) Odoo
2 1 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.34%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 112 (37.58%) AWS
2 89 (29.87%) Azure
3 54 (18.12%) GCP
4 30 (10.07%) OpenShift
5 26 (8.72%) GitHub
6 19 (6.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 18 (6.04%) OCI
8 17 (5.70%) Azure DevOps
9 16 (5.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 12 (4.03%) Amazon ECS
10 12 (4.03%) Amazon EKS
10 12 (4.03%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (3.69%) Serverless
12 10 (3.36%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (3.02%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (2.35%) Azure AKS
14 7 (2.35%) Azure Sentinel
14 7 (2.35%) Entra ID
15 6 (2.01%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (10.40%) Firewall
2 22 (7.38%) SAN
3 16 (5.37%) DNS
4 15 (5.03%) Network Security
5 9 (3.02%) VSAN
6 8 (2.68%) TCP/IP
7 6 (2.01%) 3GPP
7 6 (2.01%) iSCSI
7 6 (2.01%) RTP
7 6 (2.01%) Wireshark
8 5 (1.68%) DHCP
8 5 (1.68%) NAS
8 5 (1.68%) VPN
9 3 (1.01%) FTP
9 3 (1.01%) HTTP
9 3 (1.01%) SD-WAN
9 3 (1.01%) SSL
9 3 (1.01%) WAN
9 3 (1.01%) Wireless
10 2 (0.67%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (9.40%) Oracle Database
2 18 (6.04%) RDBMS
2 18 (6.04%) Relational Database
3 15 (5.03%) Oracle Exadata
4 14 (4.70%) MongoDB
5 13 (4.36%) NoSQL
6 9 (3.02%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (2.68%) SQL Server
8 6 (2.01%) Elasticsearch
8 6 (2.01%) Oracle Database 12c
9 5 (1.68%) DynamoDB
9 5 (1.68%) Sybase ASE
10 3 (1.01%) Amazon Aurora
10 3 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (1.01%) BusinessObjects
10 3 (1.01%) DataStage
11 2 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
11 2 (0.67%) Big Data
11 2 (0.67%) Data Lake
11 2 (0.67%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 33 (11.07%) Git
2 30 (10.07%) JIRA
3 26 (8.72%) GitLab
4 21 (7.05%) Jenkins
5 11 (3.69%) Mockito
6 6 (2.01%) TeamCity
7 5 (1.68%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (1.34%) Cucumber
9 3 (1.01%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.67%) Burp Suite
10 2 (0.67%) Gatling
10 2 (0.67%) Gradle
10 2 (0.67%) LoadRunner
10 2 (0.67%) REST Assured
10 2 (0.67%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.67%) Toad
11 1 (0.34%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.34%) Hudson
11 1 (0.34%) Jaeger
11 1 (0.34%) Liquibase
General
1 63 (21.14%) Social Skills
2 61 (20.47%) Finance
3 32 (10.74%) Banking
4 24 (8.05%) Public Sector
5 23 (7.72%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (3.36%) Legal
7 5 (1.68%) Aviation
7 5 (1.68%) Fire and Rescue
7 5 (1.68%) Military
7 5 (1.68%) Police
8 4 (1.34%) Law
8 4 (1.34%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.01%) Investment Banking
9 3 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.67%) Corporate Banking
11 1 (0.34%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 48 (16.11%) Senior
2 33 (11.07%) Linux Engineer
3 31 (10.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 30 (10.07%) Security Engineer
5 26 (8.72%) Developer
6 21 (7.05%) Cloud Engineer
6 21 (7.05%) DevOps Engineer
7 17 (5.70%) Consultant
8 16 (5.37%) DBA
8 16 (5.37%) Unix Engineer
9 15 (5.03%) Java Developer
10 12 (4.03%) Lead
10 12 (4.03%) Software Engineer
11 11 (3.69%) Cloud Security Engineer
11 11 (3.69%) Security Consultant
12 10 (3.36%) AWS Engineer
12 10 (3.36%) Data Centre Engineer
12 10 (3.36%) Platform Engineer
12 10 (3.36%) Senior Developer
12 10 (3.36%) Unix Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (5.03%) Kafka
1 15 (5.03%) Oracle GoldenGate
2 13 (4.36%) .NET
3 11 (3.69%) ActiveMQ
3 11 (3.69%) JAX-RS
3 11 (3.69%) REST
4 10 (3.36%) Redfish
5 9 (3.02%) Middleware
6 8 (2.68%) YAML
7 7 (2.35%) JSON
8 6 (2.01%) .NET Core
8 6 (2.01%) ARM Templates
8 6 (2.01%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (2.01%) RabbitMQ
9 5 (1.68%) LDAP
9 5 (1.68%) XML
10 4 (1.34%) Flash
10 4 (1.34%) Node.js
10 4 (1.34%) OpenID
10 4 (1.34%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 41 (13.76%) Cloud Native
2 30 (10.07%) Data Centre
3 26 (8.72%) Linux Command Line
4 25 (8.39%) Security Posture
5 19 (6.38%) Replication
6 16 (5.37%) Management Information System
6 16 (5.37%) PKI
7 15 (5.03%) Public Cloud
8 14 (4.70%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (4.36%) Hybrid Cloud
10 12 (4.03%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (3.69%) Mainframe
12 10 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (3.02%) Cloud Security Posture
14 8 (2.68%) Enterprise Cloud
15 6 (2.01%) Enterprise Storage
16 5 (1.68%) Private Cloud
16 5 (1.68%) Robotics
17 4 (1.34%) EMC VMAX
18 3 (1.01%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 96 (32.21%) Windows
2 74 (24.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 69 (23.15%) Unix
4 29 (9.73%) AIX
5 24 (8.05%) Windows Server
6 22 (7.38%) Solaris
7 10 (3.36%) Ubuntu
8 9 (3.02%) VMS
9 8 (2.68%) Oracle Linux
10 7 (2.35%) CentOS
11 6 (2.01%) Mac OS X
12 5 (1.68%) CoreOS
12 5 (1.68%) HPUX
12 5 (1.68%) SUSE
12 5 (1.68%) zOS
13 3 (1.01%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.67%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.67%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.67%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (34.23%) CI/CD
2 86 (28.86%) Infrastructure as Code
3 80 (26.85%) DevOps
4 69 (23.15%) Agile
5 52 (17.45%) Migration
6 49 (16.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 46 (15.44%) Continuous Improvement
7 46 (15.44%) Observability
8 41 (13.76%) Change Management
8 41 (13.76%) Cloud Security
8 41 (13.76%) High Availability
9 40 (13.42%) Infrastructure Automation
10 35 (11.74%) Test Automation
11 34 (11.41%) Performance Tuning
12 33 (11.07%) Roadmaps
13 32 (10.74%) Problem-Solving
14 30 (10.07%) Containerisation
14 30 (10.07%) Disaster Recovery
14 30 (10.07%) Runbook
14 30 (10.07%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 118 (39.60%) Python
2 80 (26.85%) Bash
3 74 (24.83%) PowerShell
4 48 (16.11%) Java
5 46 (15.44%) SQL
6 17 (5.70%) Shell Script
7 15 (5.03%) Bicep
8 12 (4.03%) C#
9 11 (3.69%) JavaScript
10 8 (2.68%) Go
11 5 (1.68%) JCL
12 4 (1.34%) Kotlin
12 4 (1.34%) Rust
12 4 (1.34%) TypeScript
13 3 (1.01%) COBOL
13 3 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.67%) C++
14 2 (0.67%) DCL
14 2 (0.67%) Perl
14 2 (0.67%) REXX
Qualifications
1 55 (18.46%) Security Cleared
2 43 (14.43%) SC Cleared
3 36 (12.08%) Degree
4 30 (10.07%) CISSP
5 22 (7.38%) Azure Certification
6 21 (7.05%) AWS Certification
7 7 (2.35%) CompTIA Security+
8 6 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (2.01%) RHCE
9 5 (1.68%) CISM
9 5 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
9 5 (1.68%) DV Cleared
10 4 (1.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (1.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 4 (1.34%) OCP
10 4 (1.34%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (1.01%) CEH
11 3 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (1.01%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (3.02%) HIPAA
2 8 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.01%) NIST
4 5 (1.68%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 5 (1.68%) GDPR
5 4 (1.34%) GRC
6 3 (1.01%) PCI DSS
6 3 (1.01%) QA
6 3 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (1.01%) SLA
7 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.34%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (20.13%) Docker
2 45 (15.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 33 (11.07%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (6.71%) Active Directory
5 19 (6.38%) vSphere
6 18 (6.04%) Oracle RAC
7 16 (5.37%) NFS
8 14 (4.70%) KVM
8 14 (4.70%) VMware ESXi
9 13 (4.36%) Firmware
10 8 (2.68%) Hyper-V
10 8 (2.68%) VMware NSX
11 5 (1.68%) Time Sharing Option
12 4 (1.34%) Ceph
12 4 (1.34%) GPFS
13 3 (1.01%) Veritas Volume Manager
14 2 (0.67%) SRDF
15 1 (0.34%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 1 (0.34%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 1 (0.34%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 104 (34.90%) Terraform
2 90 (30.20%) Ansible
3 84 (28.19%) Kubernetes
4 24 (8.05%) Progress Chef
5 23 (7.72%) Oracle RMAN
6 20 (6.71%) Prometheus
7 19 (6.38%) Data Guard
7 19 (6.38%) Grafana
8 10 (3.36%) Dell DRAC
9 9 (3.02%) Packer
10 8 (2.68%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 7 (2.35%) PowerCLI
11 7 (2.35%) vCenter Server
11 7 (2.35%) vRealize
12 6 (2.01%) Istio
13 5 (1.68%) Argo
13 5 (1.68%) Puppet
14 4 (1.34%) Oracle ZFS
14 4 (1.34%) Tivoli
14 4 (1.34%) vMotion
Vendors
1 49 (16.44%) Oracle
1 49 (16.44%) VMware
2 46 (15.44%) Red Hat
3 42 (14.09%) Microsoft
4 27 (9.06%) Google
5 20 (6.71%) IBM
6 18 (6.04%) Cisco
7 13 (4.36%) Splunk
8 12 (4.03%) ServiceNow
9 11 (3.69%) Dell
10 9 (3.02%) Broadcom
10 9 (3.02%) Dynatrace
10 9 (3.02%) HP
11 5 (1.68%) Brocade
11 5 (1.68%) CyberArk
11 5 (1.68%) Juniper
11 5 (1.68%) Sybase
11 5 (1.68%) Varonis
12 4 (1.34%) Databricks
12 4 (1.34%) SAP