Linux Administrator Contracts

Linux Administrator
UK

The median Linux Administrator daily rate in the UK is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 490 556 659
Rank change year-on-year +66 +103 +114
Contract jobs requiring a Linux Administrator 30 26 59
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.10% 0.060% 0.099%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.11% 0.064% 0.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 15 11 30
10th Percentile £410 £325 £293
25th Percentile £425 £353 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £449
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% +0.22% +5.65%
75th Percentile £588 £502 £550
90th Percentile £649 £600 £654
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £564 £425
% change year-on-year -15.78% +32.71% +4.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 10
10th Percentile - - £50.98
25th Percentile - - £51.25
Median hourly rate - - £55.63
75th Percentile - - £74.50
90th Percentile - - £76.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £58.75
% change year-on-year - - -9.62%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,084 40,415 56,464
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 92.78% 94.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,692 26,309 39,470
10th Percentile £300 £275 £313
25th Percentile £406 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £492 £500
% change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 2,664 1,570
10th Percentile £14.07 £12.86 £14.29
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.50
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%
75th Percentile £62.50 £60.75 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
% change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%

Linux Administrator
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Linux Administrator in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Linux Administrator in the UK

Linux Administrator
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Linux Administrator.

Daily rate trend for Linux Administrator in the UK

Linux Administrator
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux Administrator over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Linux Administrator in the UK

Linux Administrator
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Linux Administrator.

Hourly rate trend for Linux Administrator in the UK

Linux Administrator
Top 8 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux Administrator within the UK 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
England +70 29 £475 +5.56% 15
UK excluding London +65 17 £475 -15.78% 10
London +41 11 £550 +22.22% 8
South East +49 8 £513 +15.10% 2
Work from Home +38 6 £475 +35.71% 16
South West - 5 £354 -
Midlands +24 4 £450 - 1
West Midlands - 4 £450 -

Linux Administrator Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Linux Administrator contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Linux Administrator in the job title.

1 30 (100.00%) Linux
2 21 (70.00%) Ansible
3 19 (63.33%) VMware
3 19 (63.33%) Red Hat
4 18 (60.00%) Bash
5 17 (56.67%) DNS
5 17 (56.67%) Python
6 14 (46.67%) Perl
6 14 (46.67%) Disaster Recovery
6 14 (46.67%) High Availability
7 13 (43.33%) DevOps
7 13 (43.33%) CI/CD
8 12 (40.00%) Security Cleared
8 12 (40.00%) Solaris
9 11 (36.67%) Unix
9 11 (36.67%) Red Hat Satellite
9 11 (36.67%) AWS
10 10 (33.33%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (33.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 10 (33.33%) Git
10 10 (33.33%) Subversion
10 10 (33.33%) Clustering
11 9 (30.00%) TCP/IP
11 9 (30.00%) SC Cleared
11 9 (30.00%) REST
12 8 (26.67%) GitHub
12 8 (26.67%) Kernel Tuning
12 8 (26.67%) SaltStack
12 8 (26.67%) API Integration
12 8 (26.67%) QRadar

Linux Administrator Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 3 (10.00%) Apache
2 2 (6.67%) Confluence
2 2 (6.67%) SharePoint
3 1 (3.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (3.33%) nginx
3 1 (3.33%) Tomcat
Business Applications
1 1 (3.33%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 11 (36.67%) AWS
2 8 (26.67%) GitHub
3 7 (23.33%) Nutanix
4 6 (20.00%) Azure
5 3 (10.00%) GCP
6 2 (6.67%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 17 (56.67%) DNS
2 9 (30.00%) TCP/IP
3 6 (20.00%) DHCP
3 6 (20.00%) Firewall
4 3 (10.00%) FTP
4 3 (10.00%) Kerberos
4 3 (10.00%) SMTP
4 3 (10.00%) tcpdump
4 3 (10.00%) Telnet
5 1 (3.33%) FIX Connectivity
5 1 (3.33%) HTTPS
5 1 (3.33%) SSL
5 1 (3.33%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (6.67%) SQL Server
2 1 (3.33%) MongoDB
2 1 (3.33%) MySQL
2 1 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (3.33%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 10 (33.33%) Git
1 10 (33.33%) Subversion
2 8 (26.67%) TeamCity
3 3 (10.00%) Jenkins
4 2 (6.67%) JIRA
5 1 (3.33%) MSI
General
1 7 (23.33%) Social Skills
2 6 (20.00%) Finance
3 3 (10.00%) Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (30.00%) REST
2 6 (20.00%) LDAP
3 1 (3.33%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (3.33%) FIX Protocol
3 1 (3.33%) Keycloak
3 1 (3.33%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 10 (33.33%) Clustering
2 7 (23.33%) Replication
3 3 (10.00%) Linux Command Line
4 1 (3.33%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (3.33%) Eurex
4 1 (3.33%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 30 (100.00%) Linux
2 12 (40.00%) Solaris
3 11 (36.67%) Unix
4 10 (33.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (10.00%) CentOS
5 3 (10.00%) Windows
6 2 (6.67%) AIX
6 2 (6.67%) Rocky
7 1 (3.33%) HPUX
7 1 (3.33%) Ubuntu
7 1 (3.33%) Windows 10
7 1 (3.33%) Windows 7
7 1 (3.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (46.67%) Disaster Recovery
1 14 (46.67%) High Availability
2 13 (43.33%) CI/CD
2 13 (43.33%) DevOps
3 8 (26.67%) API Integration
3 8 (26.67%) Kernel Tuning
4 7 (23.33%) Security Hardening
5 6 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
5 6 (20.00%) Task Automation
6 4 (13.33%) Containerisation
6 4 (13.33%) Data Security
6 4 (13.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 4 (13.33%) Performance Monitoring
6 4 (13.33%) Performance Tuning
6 4 (13.33%) Project Delivery
6 4 (13.33%) Root Cause Analysis
6 4 (13.33%) Security Auditing
6 4 (13.33%) Storage Management
6 4 (13.33%) Vulnerability Management
7 3 (10.00%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 18 (60.00%) Bash
2 17 (56.67%) Python
3 14 (46.67%) Perl
4 5 (16.67%) Shell Script
5 2 (6.67%) SQL
6 1 (3.33%) Java
6 1 (3.33%) JavaScript
6 1 (3.33%) Korn
6 1 (3.33%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 12 (40.00%) Security Cleared
2 9 (30.00%) SC Cleared
3 2 (6.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 2 (6.67%) Degree
3 2 (6.67%) DV Cleared
4 1 (3.33%) CISSP
4 1 (3.33%) CompTIA Security+
4 1 (3.33%) Linux+ Certification
4 1 (3.33%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (26.67%) GDPR
2 6 (20.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 3 (10.00%) QA
System Software
1 10 (33.33%) VMware ESXi
2 8 (26.67%) NFS
2 8 (26.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (13.33%) Docker
3 4 (13.33%) Samba
3 4 (13.33%) Veritas File System
3 4 (13.33%) Veritas Volume Manager
4 3 (10.00%) Active Directory
5 2 (6.67%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 21 (70.00%) Ansible
2 11 (36.67%) Red Hat Satellite
3 8 (26.67%) QRadar
4 6 (20.00%) Tivoli
5 5 (16.67%) Terraform
6 4 (13.33%) EMC NetWorker
6 4 (13.33%) Kubernetes
6 4 (13.33%) Tivoli Storage Manager
6 4 (13.33%) yum
7 3 (10.00%) Grafana
7 3 (10.00%) Prometheus
7 3 (10.00%) SELinux
8 2 (6.67%) Control-M
8 2 (6.67%) Nagios
8 2 (6.67%) Netcool
8 2 (6.67%) Puppet
8 2 (6.67%) ZABBIX
9 1 (3.33%) Proxmox
9 1 (3.33%) SCCM
9 1 (3.33%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (63.33%) Red Hat
1 19 (63.33%) VMware
2 8 (26.67%) CyberArk
2 8 (26.67%) Qualys
2 8 (26.67%) SaltStack
2 8 (26.67%) Splunk
3 6 (20.00%) IBM
3 6 (20.00%) ServiceNow
4 5 (16.67%) HP
4 5 (16.67%) Oracle
5 4 (13.33%) EMC
6 3 (10.00%) SolarWinds
7 2 (6.67%) BMC
7 2 (6.67%) Symantec
7 2 (6.67%) Veritas
8 1 (3.33%) Bloomberg
8 1 (3.33%) CQG
8 1 (3.33%) Reuters
8 1 (3.33%) Sybase
8 1 (3.33%) Trayport