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 29 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 36 44 47
Rank change year-on-year +8 +3 -31
Contract jobs citing Linux 276 168 194
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 5.98% 4.31% 4.07%
As % of the Operating Systems category 38.82% 29.95% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 90 119
10th Percentile £309 £360 £313
25th Percentile £362 £463 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £563 £505
Median % change year-on-year -15.10% +11.49% -8.18%
75th Percentile £550 £646 £599
90th Percentile £683 £750 £650
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -6.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 6 15
10th Percentile £45.17 £43.75 £16.85
25th Percentile £50.02 £47.44 £21.25
Median hourly rate £58.10 £58.14 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year -0.07% +44.18% -9.75%
75th Percentile £66.18 £77.49 £46.38
90th Percentile £71.03 £83.18 £63.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £67.02 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.01% +7.23% -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 711 561 653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 15.40% 14.41% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 520 307 421
10th Percentile £153 £168 £175
25th Percentile £200 £250 £248
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £368 £438 £425
Median % change year-on-year -15.89% +2.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £500 £565 £544
90th Percentile £615 £648 £613
England median daily rate £450 £475 £480
% change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 37 54
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.12 £16.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £19.00 £18.13 £21.31
Median % change year-on-year +4.80% -14.92% +0.80%
75th Percentile £22.61 £24.18 £45.19
90th Percentile £39.30 £53.10 £64.63
England median hourly rate £23.50 £60.50 £32.50
% change year-on-year -61.16% +86.15% +30.00%

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025.

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 29 November 2025. 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 +13 157 £500 -18.70% 27
North West -2 115 £448 -18.55% 54
North East -7 10 £550 +16.83% 16
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 23 (8.33%) Apache
1 23 (8.33%) JBoss
2 17 (6.16%) WebSphere
3 12 (4.35%) WebSphere Application Server
4 11 (3.99%) IIS
5 10 (3.62%) iPlanet
6 8 (2.90%) Tomcat
7 7 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
8 6 (2.17%) OpenStack
8 6 (2.17%) SharePoint
8 6 (2.17%) TPMS
9 3 (1.09%) Apache Airflow
9 3 (1.09%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.72%) CICS
11 1 (0.36%) CMS
11 1 (0.36%) Confluence
11 1 (0.36%) Documentum
11 1 (0.36%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 11 (3.99%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Finacle
1 1 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.36%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 97 (35.14%) AWS
2 61 (22.10%) GCP
3 38 (13.77%) Azure
4 37 (13.41%) Serverless
5 35 (12.68%) OpenShift
6 21 (7.61%) GitHub
7 17 (6.16%) SaaS
8 16 (5.80%) IaaS
8 16 (5.80%) PaaS
9 14 (5.07%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (3.99%) Google Workspace
11 10 (3.62%) Entra ID
12 9 (3.26%) Amazon EC2
13 8 (2.90%) AWS CloudFormation
14 6 (2.17%) AWS KMS
14 6 (2.17%) AWS Lambda
14 6 (2.17%) Microsoft 365
15 5 (1.81%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (1.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 4 (1.45%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 67 (24.28%) Firewall
2 23 (8.33%) Network Security
3 17 (6.16%) SSL
4 14 (5.07%) DNS
5 11 (3.99%) TCP/IP
6 10 (3.62%) Kerberos
6 10 (3.62%) SNMP
7 7 (2.54%) SAN
7 7 (2.54%) VLAN
7 7 (2.54%) VPN
8 6 (2.17%) BGP
8 6 (2.17%) Software-Defined Networking
8 6 (2.17%) SSH
8 6 (2.17%) WebEx
9 5 (1.81%) NAS
10 4 (1.45%) DHCP
10 4 (1.45%) HTTP
11 2 (0.72%) HTTPS
11 2 (0.72%) VSAN
12 1 (0.36%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (13.04%) NoSQL
2 26 (9.42%) Oracle Database
2 26 (9.42%) PostgreSQL
3 25 (9.06%) SQL Server
4 19 (6.88%) Relational Database
5 18 (6.52%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.81%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.81%) Apache Cassandra
6 5 (1.81%) MySQL
7 3 (1.09%) Apache Hive
7 3 (1.09%) DynamoDB
7 3 (1.09%) Hadoop
7 3 (1.09%) HBase
7 3 (1.09%) RDBMS
8 2 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.72%) Siebel EIM
9 1 (0.36%) BusinessObjects
9 1 (0.36%) Oracle Database 10g
9 1 (0.36%) Oracle Database 12c
9 1 (0.36%) Redis
Development Applications
1 84 (30.43%) Jenkins
2 46 (16.67%) GitLab
3 42 (15.22%) Git
4 23 (8.33%) Liquibase
5 21 (7.61%) Sonatype Nexus
6 18 (6.52%) Mockito
7 16 (5.80%) JIRA
8 13 (4.71%) Bitbucket Server
8 13 (4.71%) CA Release Automation
9 6 (2.17%) Gradle
9 6 (2.17%) Maven
10 5 (1.81%) Bitbucket
10 5 (1.81%) CircleCI
10 5 (1.81%) JUnit
11 3 (1.09%) Postman
11 3 (1.09%) Rational DOORS
11 3 (1.09%) SonarQube
11 3 (1.09%) TeamCity
12 2 (0.72%) Octopus Deploy
13 1 (0.36%) Artifactory
General
1 81 (29.35%) Social Skills
2 73 (26.45%) Finance
3 51 (18.48%) Banking
4 28 (10.14%) Public Sector
5 25 (9.06%) Financial Institution
6 23 (8.33%) Analytical Skills
7 9 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.54%) Legal
9 4 (1.45%) Games
10 2 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.72%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.36%) Retail
11 1 (0.36%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 49 (17.75%) Developer
2 43 (15.58%) Senior
3 36 (13.04%) Java Developer
4 31 (11.23%) DevOps Engineer
5 28 (10.14%) Platform Engineer
6 25 (9.06%) Software Engineer
7 19 (6.88%) AWS Engineer
7 19 (6.88%) Cloud Engineer
8 17 (6.16%) Linux Engineer
9 16 (5.80%) Lead
9 16 (5.80%) Senior Developer
9 16 (5.80%) Senior Java Developer
10 14 (5.07%) GCP Engineer
11 13 (4.71%) Support Engineer
12 12 (4.35%) IT Engineer
12 12 (4.35%) IT Support
12 12 (4.35%) IT Support Engineer
13 10 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 10 (3.62%) Senior Software Engineer
14 9 (3.26%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (15.22%) REST
2 41 (14.86%) Elastic Stack
3 33 (11.96%) RESTful
4 23 (8.33%) Kafka
5 18 (6.52%) ActiveMQ
5 18 (6.52%) JAX-RS
6 17 (6.16%) LDAP
7 14 (5.07%) OAuth
8 13 (4.71%) Node.js
9 12 (4.35%) SAML
10 11 (3.99%) OpenID
10 11 (3.99%) Spring Boot
11 10 (3.62%) AngularJS
11 10 (3.62%) FastAPI
11 10 (3.62%) Spring
12 9 (3.26%) Middleware
12 9 (3.26%) SOAP
13 6 (2.17%) XMPP
14 4 (1.45%) React
14 4 (1.45%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.87%) Cloud Native
1 30 (10.87%) Distributed Systems
1 30 (10.87%) Public Cloud
2 12 (4.35%) Data Centre
2 12 (4.35%) Product Ownership
3 11 (3.99%) Onboarding
4 7 (2.54%) Data Protection Act
4 7 (2.54%) NHS
5 5 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
5 5 (1.81%) Legacy Applications
5 5 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.81%) PKI
5 5 (1.81%) Private Cloud
6 4 (1.45%) Security Posture
7 3 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (1.09%) Cloud Security Posture
8 2 (0.72%) Derivative
8 2 (0.72%) Enterprise Cloud
8 2 (0.72%) Mainframe
8 2 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 106 (38.41%) Windows
2 61 (22.10%) Unix
3 35 (12.68%) Windows Server
4 33 (11.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (7.97%) Mac OS X
6 3 (1.09%) Amazon Linux
6 3 (1.09%) Solaris
6 3 (1.09%) VMS
7 2 (0.72%) CentOS
7 2 (0.72%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.72%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.72%) zOS
8 1 (0.36%) MVS
8 1 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.36%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (38.04%) DevOps
2 97 (35.14%) CI/CD
3 93 (33.70%) Containerisation
4 75 (27.17%) Agile
5 70 (25.36%) Microservices
6 64 (23.19%) Infrastructure as Code
7 63 (22.83%) Problem-Solving
8 46 (16.67%) Cybersecurity
9 41 (14.86%) Observability
10 38 (13.77%) Test Automation
11 37 (13.41%) Infrastructure Automation
11 37 (13.41%) Software Engineering
12 36 (13.04%) High Availability
12 36 (13.04%) Root Cause Analysis
13 34 (12.32%) Cryptography
14 33 (11.96%) Computer Science
14 33 (11.96%) Continuous Integration
15 32 (11.59%) Data Security
16 31 (11.23%) Platform Engineering
17 27 (9.78%) Non-Functional Testing
Programming Languages
1 135 (48.91%) Python
2 65 (23.55%) Java
3 63 (22.83%) Bash
4 40 (14.49%) PowerShell
5 35 (12.68%) Go
6 30 (10.87%) Shell Script
7 21 (7.61%) SQL
8 18 (6.52%) Perl
9 17 (6.16%) PHP
10 14 (5.07%) Groovy
11 7 (2.54%) C++
12 4 (1.45%) C#
12 4 (1.45%) PL/SQL
12 4 (1.45%) Ruby
13 3 (1.09%) C
13 3 (1.09%) Delphi
13 3 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
13 3 (1.09%) Search Processing Language
14 2 (0.72%) JavaScript
14 2 (0.72%) Rust
Qualifications
1 59 (21.38%) Security Cleared
2 48 (17.39%) SC Cleared
3 35 (12.68%) Degree
4 30 (10.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (10.14%) Master's Degree
6 21 (7.61%) AWS Certification
7 17 (6.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.90%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 8 (2.90%) CCDP
8 8 (2.90%) CCNA
8 8 (2.90%) CCNP
8 8 (2.90%) Cisco Certification
9 6 (2.17%) FFIEC
10 5 (1.81%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 4 (1.45%) CISSP
11 4 (1.45%) CompTIA Security+
11 4 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
12 3 (1.09%) AWS Certified Developer
12 3 (1.09%) MCSA
12 3 (1.09%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (2.54%) GDPR
1 7 (2.54%) NIST
2 6 (2.17%) GLBA
2 6 (2.17%) PCI DSS
3 3 (1.09%) HIPAA
3 3 (1.09%) SOC 2
4 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.36%) NCSC
4 1 (0.36%) SLA
System Software
1 100 (36.23%) Docker
2 37 (13.41%) Active Directory
3 36 (13.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (4.35%) vSphere
5 10 (3.62%) Oracle RAC
6 8 (2.90%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 5 (1.81%) KVM
7 5 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (1.45%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 4 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (1.45%) VMware NSX
9 3 (1.09%) HDFS
9 3 (1.09%) Hyper-V
9 3 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.72%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.36%) Ceph
11 1 (0.36%) NFS
11 1 (0.36%) QEMU
11 1 (0.36%) SRDF
11 1 (0.36%) Xen
Systems Management
1 97 (35.14%) Kubernetes
2 79 (28.62%) Ansible
3 69 (25.00%) Terraform
4 58 (21.01%) Grafana
5 46 (16.67%) Prometheus
6 17 (6.16%) Progress Chef
7 11 (3.99%) CA Single Sign-On
8 10 (3.62%) CA Wily
8 10 (3.62%) Data Guard
8 10 (3.62%) yum
9 9 (3.26%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (2.90%) Puppet
10 8 (2.90%) Tivoli
11 7 (2.54%) NetBackup
11 7 (2.54%) Oracle RMAN
12 5 (1.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 5 (1.81%) EMC NetWorker
12 5 (1.81%) Packer
12 5 (1.81%) vCenter Server
12 5 (1.81%) vRealize
Vendors
1 65 (23.55%) Splunk
2 63 (22.83%) Oracle
3 57 (20.65%) Microsoft
4 46 (16.67%) VMware
5 37 (13.41%) Google
6 27 (9.78%) Red Hat
7 25 (9.06%) AppDynamics
8 19 (6.88%) IBM
9 16 (5.80%) Citrix
10 13 (4.71%) Cisco
10 13 (4.71%) F5
11 11 (3.99%) Broadcom
12 10 (3.62%) CyberArk
13 7 (2.54%) Veritas
14 5 (1.81%) Palo Alto
14 5 (1.81%) Thales
15 4 (1.45%) Cloudera
15 4 (1.45%) EMC
15 4 (1.45%) Juniper
16 3 (1.09%) HP