Linux Systems Administrator Contracts

Linux System Administrator
UK

The median Linux System Administrator daily rate in the UK is £463, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 July 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
17 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 539 544 637
Rank change year-on-year +5 +93 +169
Contract jobs requiring a Linux Systems Administrator 14 36 48
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.043% 0.085% 0.086%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.047% 0.092% 0.091%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 23 27
10th Percentile £313 £351 £261
25th Percentile £388 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £520 £475
Median % change year-on-year -11.06% +9.47% +15.15%
75th Percentile £488 £534 £550
90th Percentile - £538 £610
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £520 £450
% change year-on-year -8.65% +15.56% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 7
10th Percentile - - £49.75
25th Percentile - - £51.25
Median hourly rate - - £52.50
75th Percentile - - £57.19
90th Percentile - - £68.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £52.50
% change year-on-year - - -36.94%

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 29,869 39,249 52,928
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.68% 93.01% 94.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,996 25,329 36,728
10th Percentile £287 £288 £310
25th Percentile £400 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,413 2,586 1,568
10th Percentile £13.75 £13.25 £14.49
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.50 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.30 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -36.75% -5.88% +65.50%
75th Percentile £55.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £74.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £40.33 £38.35
% change year-on-year -37.63% +5.15% +82.62%

Linux Systems Administrator
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Linux Systems Administrator in the UK

Linux Systems Administrator
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Linux Systems Administrator in the UK

Linux Systems Administrator
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux Systems Administrator over the 6 months to 17 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Linux Systems Administrator in the UK

Linux Systems Administrator
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Linux Systems Administrator in the UK

Linux Systems Administrator
Top 10 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Linux Systems Administrator within the UK over the 6 months to 17 July 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 +34 11 £463 -11.06% 10
UK excluding London +2 8 £475 -8.65% 7
Work from Home +31 7 £463 -2.63% 7
East of England - 3 £250 -
South West +41 2 £475 -9.52% 2
London +28 2 - - 6
South East +23 1 £475 -8.65% 2
Scotland -1 1 - - 1
Midlands -4 1 £450 -13.46% 1
West Midlands - 1 £450 -

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

For the 6 months to 17 July 2025, Linux Systems 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 Systems Administrator in the job title.

1 14 (100.00%) Linux
2 9 (64.29%) Ansible
3 8 (57.14%) Python
4 7 (50.00%) VMware
4 7 (50.00%) Ubuntu
5 6 (42.86%) CentOS
5 6 (42.86%) AWS
5 6 (42.86%) Social Skills
5 6 (42.86%) Containerisation
6 5 (35.71%) Progress Chef
6 5 (35.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (35.71%) JIRA
6 5 (35.71%) VMware Infrastructure
6 5 (35.71%) Windows
7 4 (28.57%) SAN
7 4 (28.57%) Red Hat
7 4 (28.57%) Shell Script
7 4 (28.57%) Agile
7 4 (28.57%) QA
7 4 (28.57%) Docker
7 4 (28.57%) DevOps
7 4 (28.57%) Bash
8 3 (21.43%) Puppet
8 3 (21.43%) Enterprise Storage
8 3 (21.43%) Rackspace
8 3 (21.43%) MariaDB
8 3 (21.43%) Jenkins
8 3 (21.43%) Server Patching
8 3 (21.43%) Vagrant
8 3 (21.43%) ServiceNow

Linux Systems 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 (21.43%) Apache
2 2 (14.29%) Confluence
2 2 (14.29%) OpenStack
Cloud Services
1 6 (42.86%) AWS
2 2 (14.29%) Cloud Computing
3 1 (7.14%) Azure
3 1 (7.14%) GitHub
3 1 (7.14%) OpenShift
3 1 (7.14%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (28.57%) SAN
2 3 (21.43%) DNS
2 3 (21.43%) iSCSI
3 2 (14.29%) Firewall
4 1 (7.14%) Kerberos
4 1 (7.14%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (21.43%) MariaDB
1 3 (21.43%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 5 (35.71%) JIRA
2 3 (21.43%) Jenkins
2 3 (21.43%) Vagrant
3 2 (14.29%) Bitbucket
3 2 (14.29%) Git
3 2 (14.29%) GitLab
3 2 (14.29%) TeamCity
4 1 (7.14%) Maven
General
1 6 (42.86%) Social Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (21.43%) LAMP
2 2 (14.29%) Zend Framework
3 1 (7.14%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (7.14%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 3 (21.43%) Data Centre
1 3 (21.43%) Enterprise Storage
1 3 (21.43%) Linux Command Line
2 1 (7.14%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 14 (100.00%) Linux
2 7 (50.00%) Ubuntu
3 6 (42.86%) CentOS
4 5 (35.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (35.71%) Windows
5 3 (21.43%) Debian
6 1 (7.14%) AIX
6 1 (7.14%) Unix
6 1 (7.14%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (42.86%) Containerisation
2 4 (28.57%) Agile
2 4 (28.57%) DevOps
3 3 (21.43%) CI/CD
3 3 (21.43%) Configuration Management
3 3 (21.43%) ITSM
3 3 (21.43%) Server Patching
4 2 (14.29%) Build Automation
4 2 (14.29%) Computer Science
4 2 (14.29%) Continuous Integration
4 2 (14.29%) Cybersecurity
4 2 (14.29%) Data Science
4 2 (14.29%) Deployment Automation
4 2 (14.29%) Disaster Recovery
4 2 (14.29%) Security Hardening
4 2 (14.29%) Server Building
4 2 (14.29%) Software Deployment
5 1 (7.14%) Continuous Improvement
5 1 (7.14%) Data Protection
5 1 (7.14%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 8 (57.14%) Python
2 4 (28.57%) Bash
2 4 (28.57%) Shell Script
3 3 (21.43%) Perl
4 2 (14.29%) JavaScript
4 2 (14.29%) PHP
5 1 (7.14%) Java
Qualifications
1 2 (14.29%) Degree
2 1 (7.14%) CISSP
2 1 (7.14%) CompTIA Security+
2 1 (7.14%) Linux+ Certification
2 1 (7.14%) RHCE
2 1 (7.14%) SC Cleared
2 1 (7.14%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (28.57%) QA
2 3 (21.43%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 5 (35.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 4 (28.57%) Docker
3 3 (21.43%) Active Directory
3 3 (21.43%) Hyper-V
4 2 (14.29%) VirtualBox
5 1 (7.14%) GPFS
5 1 (7.14%) NFS
5 1 (7.14%) Samba
Systems Management
1 9 (64.29%) Ansible
2 5 (35.71%) Progress Chef
3 3 (21.43%) Nagios
3 3 (21.43%) Puppet
4 2 (14.29%) Icinga
4 2 (14.29%) Kubernetes
4 2 (14.29%) Salt
5 1 (7.14%) BladeLogic
5 1 (7.14%) SELinux
5 1 (7.14%) Terraform
5 1 (7.14%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 7 (50.00%) VMware
2 4 (28.57%) Red Hat
3 3 (21.43%) Microsoft
3 3 (21.43%) Rackspace
3 3 (21.43%) ServiceNow
4 2 (14.29%) New Relic
4 2 (14.29%) Zend
5 1 (7.14%) Dell
5 1 (7.14%) HP
5 1 (7.14%) IBM
5 1 (7.14%) Mellanox
5 1 (7.14%) Solarflare
5 1 (7.14%) Sun