Linux Contracts in the UK excluding London

Linux
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring Linux skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Linux over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 24 26 24
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 +3
Contract jobs citing Linux 935 1,218 1,795
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 7.32% 5.86% 7.46%
As % of the Operating Systems category 42.60% 37.19% 38.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 568 791 1,220
10th Percentile £372 £350 £362
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +0.37% +7.60%
75th Percentile £603 £608 £632
90th Percentile £700 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% +0.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 100 133
10th Percentile £49.24 £26.14 £36.56
25th Percentile £56.03 £48.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.25 £60.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.85% -6.92% +8.33%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.30
90th Percentile - - £75.40
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £60.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +7.44% -6.92% +8.33%

All Operating Systems
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 2,195 3,275 4,635
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 17.19% 15.77% 19.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,415 2,176 3,246
10th Percentile £178 £173 £163
25th Percentile £241 £256 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -5.26% +11.76%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £469 £505
% change year-on-year +1.28% -7.13% +1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 320 334
10th Percentile £15.72 £12.25 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.44 £14.16 £17.50
Median hourly rate £22.94 £22.00 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +4.26% -29.60% +56.25%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £61.25
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £73.74
UK median hourly rate £24.18 £22.00 £39.30
% change year-on-year +9.91% -44.02% +74.67%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing Linux as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Linux in the UK excluding London

Linux
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Linux in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Linux in the UK excluding London

Linux
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Linux in the UK excluding London

Linux
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Linux in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Linux in the UK excluding London

Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Linux in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Linux in the UK excluding London

Linux
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
Scotland +10 235 £468 -20.76% 180
North of England +8 207 £538 +12.57% 641
South East -8 202 £550 +4.76% 842
South West +9 143 £600 - 392
Yorkshire +6 99 £550 +10.00% 218
North West +24 98 £510 +13.31% 347
Midlands -7 73 £500 -9.09% 446
East of England -3 69 £490 +13.29% 514
West Midlands -4 55 £537 -2.36% 251
East Midlands -10 18 £455 -14.04% 163
North East 0 13 £525 -4.55% 78
Wales -16 10 £586 +1.91% 65
Northern Ireland -10 6 £325 -34.18% 52
Linux
UK

Linux
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 51 (5.45%) Confluence
2 32 (3.42%) Apache
3 28 (2.99%) Microsoft Exchange
4 18 (1.93%) JBoss
5 17 (1.82%) nginx
6 16 (1.71%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 11 (1.18%) Tomcat
8 9 (0.96%) CMS
9 7 (0.75%) IIS
9 7 (0.75%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.75%) Traefik
9 7 (0.75%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.64%) Apache Spark
10 6 (0.64%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.64%) NetWeaver
10 6 (0.64%) Skype for Business
10 6 (0.64%) WebSphere
11 5 (0.53%) Mattermost
12 4 (0.43%) Drupal
12 4 (0.43%) WordPress
Applications
1 17 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (0.64%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.11%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 5 (0.53%) Kondor
2 4 (0.43%) SAP IBP
3 2 (0.21%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 207 (22.14%) AWS
2 160 (17.11%) Azure
3 62 (6.63%) OpenShift
4 40 (4.28%) GCP
5 30 (3.21%) Entra ID
5 30 (3.21%) Microsoft 365
6 29 (3.10%) Azure DevOps
7 28 (2.99%) AWS CloudFormation
8 27 (2.89%) GitHub
9 24 (2.57%) IaaS
10 17 (1.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 17 (1.82%) Amazon ECS
11 16 (1.71%) Cloud Computing
12 15 (1.60%) Amazon S3
13 14 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (1.50%) PaaS
13 14 (1.50%) SaaS
14 13 (1.39%) AWS Fargate
15 11 (1.18%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 10 (1.07%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 106 (11.34%) DNS
2 64 (6.84%) DHCP
3 61 (6.52%) Firewall
4 55 (5.88%) SAN
5 54 (5.78%) TCP/IP
6 44 (4.71%) VPN
7 42 (4.49%) LAN
8 38 (4.06%) WAN
9 33 (3.53%) HTTP
10 24 (2.57%) Network Security
11 23 (2.46%) Ethernet
12 20 (2.14%) SMTP
13 19 (2.03%) NAS
13 19 (2.03%) Wireless
14 17 (1.82%) MPLS
15 16 (1.71%) ATM
15 16 (1.71%) Frame Relay
15 16 (1.71%) GPRS
15 16 (1.71%) SDH
15 16 (1.71%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (7.27%) MongoDB
2 62 (6.63%) Relational Database
3 48 (5.13%) SQL Server
4 40 (4.28%) Oracle Database
4 40 (4.28%) PostgreSQL
5 37 (3.96%) DB2
6 35 (3.74%) MySQL
7 24 (2.57%) Big Data
8 20 (2.14%) Elasticsearch
9 19 (2.03%) RDBMS
10 15 (1.60%) Amazon RDS
11 14 (1.50%) KDB
11 14 (1.50%) Kdb+
12 13 (1.39%) Apache Cassandra
13 10 (1.07%) NoSQL
14 9 (0.96%) Hadoop
15 6 (0.64%) Data Warehouse
15 6 (0.64%) DynamoDB
15 6 (0.64%) Power BI
16 5 (0.53%) Siebel EIM
Development Applications
1 132 (14.12%) Jenkins
2 127 (13.58%) Git
3 93 (9.95%) JIRA
4 70 (7.49%) GitLab
5 55 (5.88%) Bitbucket
6 47 (5.03%) JUnit
7 24 (2.57%) Eclipse
8 22 (2.35%) GoogleTest
9 18 (1.93%) Maven
10 17 (1.82%) Bitbucket Server
11 16 (1.71%) Cucumber
11 16 (1.71%) Robot Framework
12 14 (1.50%) Jasmine
12 14 (1.50%) SonarQube
13 11 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (1.18%) Subversion
14 9 (0.96%) CA Release Automation
14 9 (0.96%) Rational DOORS
14 9 (0.96%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.96%) Visual Studio
General
1 258 (27.59%) Social Skills
2 115 (12.30%) Finance
3 107 (11.44%) Analytical Skills
4 86 (9.20%) Public Sector
5 75 (8.02%) Banking
6 41 (4.39%) Investment Banking
7 31 (3.32%) Telecoms
8 27 (2.89%) Front Office
9 19 (2.03%) Organisational Skills
10 18 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 15 (1.60%) Law
12 14 (1.50%) Legal
13 13 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
13 13 (1.39%) Manufacturing
14 12 (1.28%) Military
15 10 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
16 9 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
17 8 (0.86%) Electronics
18 7 (0.75%) Marketing
19 6 (0.64%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 168 (17.97%) Developer
2 95 (10.16%) Senior
3 93 (9.95%) Linux Engineer
4 88 (9.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 82 (8.77%) Java Developer
6 74 (7.91%) Architect
7 71 (7.59%) DevOps Engineer
8 60 (6.42%) Software Engineer
9 47 (5.03%) Support Engineer
10 39 (4.17%) Administrator
11 38 (4.06%) Lead
11 38 (4.06%) Linux Developer
11 38 (4.06%) Python Developer
12 34 (3.64%) Test Engineer
13 33 (3.53%) Embedded Engineer
14 32 (3.42%) Analyst
15 31 (3.32%) Platform Engineer
16 27 (2.89%) Senior Developer
17 26 (2.78%) Network Engineer
18 25 (2.67%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (7.59%) Spring
2 48 (5.13%) Kafka
3 46 (4.92%) Spring Boot
4 44 (4.71%) Middleware
5 36 (3.85%) SOAP
6 35 (3.74%) REST
7 28 (2.99%) JMS
8 27 (2.89%) LDAP
9 25 (2.67%) RESTful
10 24 (2.57%) HTML
11 23 (2.46%) CSS
12 22 (2.35%) Web Services
13 21 (2.25%) Elastic Stack
14 17 (1.82%) .NET
14 17 (1.82%) cloud-init
15 15 (1.60%) Node.js
16 14 (1.50%) Spring Batch
17 13 (1.39%) AngularJS
18 12 (1.28%) Swagger
19 11 (1.18%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 55 (5.88%) Data Centre
2 40 (4.28%) Linux Command Line
3 37 (3.96%) Data Structures
4 36 (3.85%) Management Information System
5 30 (3.21%) Data Protection Act
6 29 (3.10%) Public Cloud
7 28 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
8 26 (2.78%) Algorithms
8 26 (2.78%) PKI
8 26 (2.78%) Product Ownership
9 25 (2.67%) Equities
9 25 (2.67%) Self-Motivation
10 23 (2.46%) Hybrid Cloud
11 18 (1.93%) Replication
12 17 (1.82%) Clustering
12 17 (1.82%) Virtual Team
13 14 (1.50%) SCADA
14 13 (1.39%) Derivative
14 13 (1.39%) Embedded Systems
14 13 (1.39%) Verilog
Operating Systems
1 388 (41.50%) Windows
2 204 (21.82%) Unix
3 175 (18.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 145 (15.51%) Windows Server
5 48 (5.13%) Ubuntu
6 42 (4.49%) CentOS
7 27 (2.89%) AIX
8 26 (2.78%) Solaris
9 22 (2.35%) Windows Server 2016
10 20 (2.14%) Embedded Linux
11 17 (1.82%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (1.60%) Mac OS
13 14 (1.50%) VMS
14 12 (1.28%) HPUX
15 9 (0.96%) Windows 10
16 8 (0.86%) Android
16 8 (0.86%) Apple iOS
17 6 (0.64%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.64%) Windows Server 2003
17 6 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 231 (24.71%) Agile
2 219 (23.42%) Problem-Solving
3 187 (20.00%) DevOps
4 147 (15.72%) Software Engineering
5 144 (15.40%) CI/CD
6 119 (12.73%) Containerisation
7 108 (11.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 84 (8.98%) Microservices
9 82 (8.77%) Infrastructure as Code
9 82 (8.77%) SDLC
10 73 (7.81%) Test Automation
11 72 (7.70%) Continuous Integration
12 70 (7.49%) ITIL
13 68 (7.27%) High Availability
14 66 (7.06%) Migration
15 60 (6.42%) Scrum
16 58 (6.20%) Performance Tuning
17 55 (5.88%) Multithreading
18 52 (5.56%) Validation
19 51 (5.45%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 337 (36.04%) Python
2 197 (21.07%) SQL
3 191 (20.43%) Java
4 147 (15.72%) Bash
5 123 (13.16%) PowerShell
6 106 (11.34%) Shell Script
7 84 (8.98%) Perl
8 75 (8.02%) C++
9 63 (6.74%) JavaScript
10 44 (4.71%) PL/SQL
11 31 (3.32%) C
12 27 (2.89%) C#
13 24 (2.57%) Go
14 22 (2.35%) Ada
15 17 (1.82%) Tcl
16 14 (1.50%) TypeScript
17 13 (1.39%) SystemVerilog
18 9 (0.96%) PHP
19 8 (0.86%) Ruby
20 7 (0.75%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 315 (33.69%) Security Cleared
2 215 (22.99%) SC Cleared
3 91 (9.73%) DV Cleared
4 58 (6.20%) Degree
5 50 (5.35%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (3.10%) CCNP
7 23 (2.46%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 20 (2.14%) Computer Science Degree
9 17 (1.82%) AWS Certification
9 17 (1.82%) RHCE
10 16 (1.71%) ISEB
10 16 (1.71%) ISTQB
10 16 (1.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 11 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 11 (1.18%) OCA
11 11 (1.18%) Oracle Certification
12 10 (1.07%) RHCA
13 9 (0.96%) BPSS Clearance
13 9 (0.96%) CISSP
14 6 (0.64%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (1.93%) SLA
2 17 (1.82%) Disclosure Scotland
3 15 (1.60%) QA
4 14 (1.50%) NCSC
5 12 (1.28%) NIST
6 11 (1.18%) GDPR
7 10 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
8 9 (0.96%) Accessibility
9 7 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 7 (0.75%) PCI DSS
10 5 (0.53%) Basel III
10 5 (0.53%) GxP
10 5 (0.53%) HL7
10 5 (0.53%) MiFID
10 5 (0.53%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 4 (0.43%) Data Quality
11 4 (0.43%) WCAG
12 2 (0.21%) MISRA
12 2 (0.21%) MISRA C
System Software
1 165 (17.65%) Docker
2 121 (12.94%) Active Directory
3 119 (12.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (4.28%) Hyper-V
5 26 (2.78%) VMware ESXi
6 25 (2.67%) vSphere
7 17 (1.82%) Firmware
7 17 (1.82%) Virtual Servers
8 13 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (1.28%) VMware NSX
10 10 (1.07%) NFS
10 10 (1.07%) Veritas Cluster Server
11 9 (0.96%) Samba
12 8 (0.86%) BitLocker
12 8 (0.86%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.86%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.86%) Terminal Services
13 4 (0.43%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 4 (0.43%) Postfix
14 3 (0.32%) LXC
Systems Management
1 211 (22.57%) Kubernetes
2 183 (19.57%) Ansible
3 143 (15.29%) Terraform
4 71 (7.59%) Puppet
5 54 (5.78%) Grafana
6 48 (5.13%) Prometheus
7 40 (4.28%) vCenter Server
8 38 (4.06%) Progress Chef
9 23 (2.46%) Packer
10 15 (1.60%) Nagios
11 14 (1.50%) Kibana
11 14 (1.50%) ZABBIX
12 13 (1.39%) Istio
12 13 (1.39%) SCCM
13 12 (1.28%) HAProxy
14 11 (1.18%) Nessus
14 11 (1.18%) yum
15 10 (1.07%) Consul
15 10 (1.07%) Microsoft Intune
15 10 (1.07%) Rancher
Vendors
1 201 (21.50%) VMware
2 152 (16.26%) Red Hat
3 147 (15.72%) Microsoft
4 100 (10.70%) Oracle
5 85 (9.09%) Cisco
6 68 (7.27%) Splunk
7 42 (4.49%) Sybase
8 39 (4.17%) Google
8 39 (4.17%) IBM
9 38 (4.06%) HP
10 34 (3.64%) Atlassian
11 30 (3.21%) ServiceNow
12 23 (2.46%) Veritas
13 20 (2.14%) Dell
14 19 (2.03%) Symantec
15 18 (1.93%) Juniper
16 17 (1.82%) Citrix
17 15 (1.60%) AppDynamics
18 14 (1.50%) Apple
18 14 (1.50%) F5