Linux Command Line Contract Job Trends

Linux/Unix Command Line Interface (CLI)
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Linux Command Line in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Linux Command Line over the 6 months leading up to 8 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 540 430 430
Rank change year-on-year -110 0 +95
Contract jobs citing Linux Command Line 98 92 163
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.31% 0.37%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 0.61% 0.92% 1.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 75 56 93
10th Percentile £316 £321 £430
25th Percentile £402 £438 £510
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% -3.41% +2.33%
75th Percentile £581 £658 £650
90th Percentile £623 £751 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -14.29% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 21
10th Percentile - - £30.63
25th Percentile - £56.25 -
Median hourly rate £34.13 £57.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -40.64% -17.86% +250.00%
75th Percentile - £65.63 -
90th Percentile - £69.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £57.50 £70.00
% change year-on-year -40.64% -17.86% +46.66%

All Generic Skills
UK

Linux Command Line falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 16,007 9,989 13,068
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.34% 34.13% 30.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,847 6,279 8,355
10th Percentile £313 £299 £274
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 801 423 931
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £20.45 £15.32
Median hourly rate £43.96 £33.05 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.01% -6.90% +58.94%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.25 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.81 £35.00
% change year-on-year +33.98% -6.26% +59.09%

Linux Command Line
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Linux Command Line relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Linux Command Line job vacancy trend in the UK

Linux Command Line
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux Command Line.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux Command Line

Linux Command Line
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux Command Line over the 6 months to 8 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Linux Command Line in the UK

Linux Command Line
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux Command Line.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Linux Command Line

Linux Command Line
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux Command Line within the UK over the 6 months to 8 June 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
England -115 82 £525 -4.55% 41
UK excluding London -85 67 £450 -14.29% 30
North of England -71 26 £583 +5.91% 7
Work from Home -64 24 £465 -7.10% 22
Midlands - 21 £425 - 4
West Midlands - 21 £425 -
North West -22 20 £579 - 2
London -84 18 £544 -1.81% 15
South East -60 9 £525 +10.53% 7
Yorkshire -70 6 £643 +16.82% 5
Scotland -19 5 £304 -34.27%
South West -26 4 £513 - 7
East of England -26 3 £325 -35.06% 5

Linux Command Line
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 6 (6.12%) Confluence
2 2 (2.04%) Apache
2 2 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
2 2 (2.04%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.02%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (7.14%) Notepad++
2 5 (5.10%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (1.02%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 34 (34.69%) AWS
2 21 (21.43%) Azure
3 13 (13.27%) GitHub
4 9 (9.18%) OpenShift
5 5 (5.10%) Amazon S3
6 4 (4.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 4 (4.08%) Amazon EC2
6 4 (4.08%) AWS CloudFormation
6 4 (4.08%) AWS Lambda
6 4 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (4.08%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (4.08%) Serverless
7 3 (3.06%) AWS CloudTrail
7 3 (3.06%) AWS Step Functions
7 3 (3.06%) Azure ExpressRoute
7 3 (3.06%) Azure Monitor
7 3 (3.06%) Azure Stack
7 3 (3.06%) Entra ID
7 3 (3.06%) GCP
8 2 (2.04%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 12 (12.24%) Firewall
2 10 (10.20%) VSAN
3 8 (8.16%) Network Security
4 7 (7.14%) PuTTY
4 7 (7.14%) VLAN
4 7 (7.14%) WAN
4 7 (7.14%) WinSCP
5 6 (6.12%) VPN
6 5 (5.10%) BGP
6 5 (5.10%) DNS
7 4 (4.08%) TCP/IP
8 3 (3.06%) Ethernet VPN
8 3 (3.06%) LAN
8 3 (3.06%) OSPF
9 2 (2.04%) DHCP
9 2 (2.04%) Internet
9 2 (2.04%) SD-WAN
9 2 (2.04%) SSL
9 2 (2.04%) VXLAN
9 2 (2.04%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (11.22%) SQL Server
2 8 (8.16%) Data Warehouse
2 8 (8.16%) Metadata
3 7 (7.14%) BusinessObjects
4 6 (6.12%) Db2
5 5 (5.10%) MongoDB
6 4 (4.08%) Apache Cassandra
6 4 (4.08%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (4.08%) Relational Database
7 3 (3.06%) NoSQL
7 3 (3.06%) Redis
8 2 (2.04%) MySQL
8 2 (2.04%) RDBMS
9 1 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
9 1 (1.02%) Apache Hive
9 1 (1.02%) Base SAS
9 1 (1.02%) Big Data
9 1 (1.02%) Hadoop
9 1 (1.02%) IDMS
9 1 (1.02%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 12 (12.24%) JIRA
2 11 (11.22%) Git
3 8 (8.16%) Jenkins
4 5 (5.10%) GitLab
5 2 (2.04%) Cucumber
5 2 (2.04%) Gradle
5 2 (2.04%) JUnit
5 2 (2.04%) Postman
5 2 (2.04%) REST Assured
6 1 (1.02%) Burp Suite
6 1 (1.02%) Claude Code
6 1 (1.02%) Gatling
6 1 (1.02%) Gemini Tracker
6 1 (1.02%) git-flow
6 1 (1.02%) LoadRunner
6 1 (1.02%) Maven
6 1 (1.02%) Selenium
6 1 (1.02%) SonarQube
6 1 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (1.02%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 17 (17.35%) Finance
2 8 (8.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 6 (6.12%) Banking
4 5 (5.10%) Social Skills
5 4 (4.08%) Public Sector
6 3 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.04%) Analytical Skills
8 1 (1.02%) Back Office
8 1 (1.02%) Law
8 1 (1.02%) Military
Job Titles
1 21 (21.43%) Analyst
2 15 (15.31%) Storage Analyst
3 14 (14.29%) Developer
4 9 (9.18%) Data Engineer
4 9 (9.18%) Infrastructure Analyst
5 6 (6.12%) Applications Developer
5 6 (6.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 6 (6.12%) Network Engineer
5 6 (6.12%) Pensions Analyst
5 6 (6.12%) Security Engineer
5 6 (6.12%) Technical Specialist
6 5 (5.10%) Azure Engineer
6 5 (5.10%) DevOps Engineer
6 5 (5.10%) Test Engineer
7 4 (4.08%) AWS Engineer
7 4 (4.08%) Java Developer
7 4 (4.08%) Migration Engineer
7 4 (4.08%) Storage Engineer
8 3 (3.06%) Platform Engineer
9 2 (2.04%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (19.39%) Flash
2 10 (10.20%) RabbitMQ
3 6 (6.12%) PyTorch
3 6 (6.12%) REST
4 5 (5.10%) Kafka
4 5 (5.10%) Spring
4 5 (5.10%) Spring Boot
5 3 (3.06%) Spring Batch
6 2 (2.04%) HTML
6 2 (2.04%) JSON
6 2 (2.04%) LAMP
6 2 (2.04%) MERN Stack
6 2 (2.04%) Microsoft Graph
6 2 (2.04%) Node.js
6 2 (2.04%) pytest
6 2 (2.04%) RESTful
7 1 (1.02%) ADO
7 1 (1.02%) Middleware
7 1 (1.02%) pydantic
7 1 (1.02%) Quarkus
Miscellaneous
1 23 (23.47%) Replication
2 8 (8.16%) PKI
3 7 (7.14%) Cloud Native
3 7 (7.14%) Security Posture
4 5 (5.10%) Cloud Security Posture
4 5 (5.10%) Data Centre
4 5 (5.10%) Management Information System
5 4 (4.08%) Clustering
5 4 (4.08%) Virtual Team
6 3 (3.06%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (2.04%) Acoustics
8 1 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 1 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (1.02%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 76 (77.55%) Linux
2 34 (34.69%) Unix
3 24 (24.49%) Windows
4 15 (15.31%) Windows Server
5 6 (6.12%) AIX
5 6 (6.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (5.10%) VMS
7 3 (3.06%) Android
7 3 (3.06%) Mac OS
7 3 (3.06%) SUSE
8 1 (1.02%) Apple iOS
8 1 (1.02%) CoreOS
8 1 (1.02%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (19.39%) Agile
2 16 (16.33%) CI/CD
3 15 (15.31%) Migration
4 14 (14.29%) Test Automation
4 14 (14.29%) Ticket Management
4 14 (14.29%) Validation
5 12 (12.24%) Containerisation
6 11 (11.22%) DevOps
7 10 (10.20%) Observability
7 10 (10.20%) SIEM
8 9 (9.18%) Data Pipeline
8 9 (9.18%) ETL
8 9 (9.18%) Infrastructure as Code
9 8 (8.16%) AI
9 8 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 8 (8.16%) Virtual Environments
10 7 (7.14%) Problem-Solving
11 6 (6.12%) Data Loss Prevention
11 6 (6.12%) LLM
11 6 (6.12%) Privileged Access Management
Programming Languages
1 43 (43.88%) Python
2 35 (35.71%) SQL
3 29 (29.59%) PowerShell
4 24 (24.49%) Bash
5 13 (13.27%) Shell Script
6 8 (8.16%) PL/SQL
7 7 (7.14%) Java
8 2 (2.04%) AppleScript
8 2 (2.04%) C
8 2 (2.04%) Groovy
8 2 (2.04%) JavaScript
8 2 (2.04%) Kusto Query Language
8 2 (2.04%) Perl
8 2 (2.04%) PHP
9 1 (1.02%) Bicep
9 1 (1.02%) Go
9 1 (1.02%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 30 (30.61%) Security Cleared
2 15 (15.31%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.14%) Azure Certification
3 7 (7.14%) DV Cleared
4 6 (6.12%) Degree
5 5 (5.10%) Cisco Certification
6 3 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (3.06%) CCNP
7 2 (2.04%) AWS Certification
7 2 (2.04%) AWS Certified Developer
7 2 (2.04%) CCNA
7 2 (2.04%) CISSP
7 2 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (2.04%) ISTQB
7 2 (2.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 1 (1.02%) RHCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.16%) QA
2 6 (6.12%) HIPAA
3 5 (5.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
3 5 (5.10%) GDPR
4 4 (4.08%) NIST
5 3 (3.06%) PCI DSS
6 2 (2.04%) GMP
7 1 (1.02%) Data Quality
7 1 (1.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (1.02%) SLA
7 1 (1.02%) SOC 2
System Software
1 22 (22.45%) Docker
2 21 (21.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (19.39%) GPFS
3 19 (19.39%) NFS
4 18 (18.37%) VMware ESXi
4 18 (18.37%) vSphere
5 11 (11.22%) Hyper-V
5 11 (11.22%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (6.12%) KVM
7 5 (5.10%) Firmware
8 3 (3.06%) Active Directory
9 2 (2.04%) Squid
9 2 (2.04%) VirtualBox
10 1 (1.02%) Ceph
10 1 (1.02%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 30 (30.61%) Kubernetes
2 18 (18.37%) Ansible
3 14 (14.29%) Terraform
3 14 (14.29%) vRealize
4 10 (10.20%) vCenter Server
4 10 (10.20%) VxRail
5 6 (6.12%) IBM BigFix
5 6 (6.12%) Prometheus
6 5 (5.10%) Grafana
7 4 (4.08%) Packer
8 3 (3.06%) Docker Swarm
8 3 (3.06%) Failover Clustering
8 3 (3.06%) Microsoft Clustering
9 2 (2.04%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (2.04%) Puppet
10 1 (1.02%) Control-M
10 1 (1.02%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (1.02%) Nessus
10 1 (1.02%) Progress Chef
10 1 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 27 (27.55%) Oracle
2 25 (25.51%) IBM
3 24 (24.49%) VMware
4 22 (22.45%) ServiceNow
5 17 (17.35%) Cisco
6 7 (7.14%) Informatica
6 7 (7.14%) Microsoft
7 5 (5.10%) Varonis
8 4 (4.08%) Red Hat
9 3 (3.06%) Dell
9 3 (3.06%) Mellanox
9 3 (3.06%) NVIDIA
10 2 (2.04%) Atlassian
10 2 (2.04%) CyberArk
10 2 (2.04%) PagerDuty
10 2 (2.04%) Trend Micro
10 2 (2.04%) UiPath
11 1 (1.02%) Qualys
11 1 (1.02%) Splunk
11 1 (1.02%) Veeam