Linux Contract Job Trends

Linux
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Linux skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -19 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,896 1,670 2,185
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.91% 5.84% 5.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.24% 42.14% 38.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,170 1,072 1,453
10th Percentile £340 £375 £340
25th Percentile £410 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £542 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.75% -1.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £641
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £525 £544
% change year-on-year -6.48% -3.49% +3.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 38 114
10th Percentile £33.90 £43.28 £39.60
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £55.00
Median hourly rate £60.17 £64.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% -0.77% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.04 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £61.42 £64.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -4.78% -0.77% -

All Operating Systems
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,712 3,963 5,731
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.86% 13.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,011 2,606 3,883
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £466 £470
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -0.90% -6.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 171 401
10th Percentile £15.74 £15.22 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £37.50 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.45% -2.22% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.38 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.36 £19.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +86.44% -13.33% -30.77%

Linux
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Linux job vacancy trend in the UK

Linux
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Linux
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Linux over the 6 months to 26 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Linux in the UK

Linux
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Linux
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Linux over the 6 months to 26 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Linux in the UK

Linux
Top 17 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 within the UK over the 6 months to 26 May 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 -22 1,585 £513 -6.82% 701
UK excluding London -12 1,145 £491 -6.48% 552
London -50 536 £550 -8.33% 213
Work from Home -30 473 £500 -4.76% 278
South East -3 325 £500 -9.09% 177
North of England -13 283 £480 -8.57% 97
South West -6 159 £538 -10.42% 111
Midlands -13 152 £500 +0.05% 47
Yorkshire -19 148 £478 -12.18% 21
West Midlands -15 132 £493 -7.25% 22
North West -12 121 £480 -4.10% 57
Scotland -20 99 £463 -2.01% 33
East of England -18 91 £475 +0.26% 77
Wales +5 27 £465 -20.65% 15
East Midlands -29 17 £530 +16.61% 25
Northern Ireland +8 14 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -19 14 £446 -18.12% 21

Linux
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 81 (4.27%) Confluence
2 51 (2.69%) Apache
3 31 (1.64%) nginx
4 25 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.05%) Tomcat
7 19 (1.00%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.90%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.74%) SAS
10 12 (0.63%) OpenStack
11 11 (0.58%) CICS
11 11 (0.58%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.37%) JBoss
14 7 (0.37%) SharePoint
14 7 (0.37%) TPMS
15 6 (0.32%) IIS
15 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
16 4 (0.21%) CMS
Applications
1 23 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.21%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 524 (27.64%) AWS
2 382 (20.15%) Azure
3 162 (8.54%) GitHub
4 121 (6.38%) OpenShift
5 113 (5.96%) GCP
6 92 (4.85%) GitHub Actions
7 83 (4.38%) Amazon EC2
8 81 (4.27%) Amazon S3
9 69 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
10 66 (3.48%) Amazon EKS
11 60 (3.16%) AWS CloudFormation
11 60 (3.16%) Serverless
12 58 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 50 (2.64%) AWS Lambda
14 44 (2.32%) Entra ID
14 44 (2.32%) IaaS
15 41 (2.16%) Microsoft 365
16 40 (2.11%) PaaS
17 38 (2.00%) Amazon ECS
18 37 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 176 (9.28%) Firewall
2 133 (7.01%) DNS
3 92 (4.85%) TCP/IP
4 75 (3.96%) VPN
5 65 (3.43%) SAN
6 61 (3.22%) Network Security
7 46 (2.43%) WAN
8 42 (2.22%) DHCP
9 40 (2.11%) LAN
10 36 (1.90%) SNMP
11 35 (1.85%) VSAN
12 33 (1.74%) SSH
13 31 (1.64%) HTTP
13 31 (1.64%) SSL
14 26 (1.37%) NAS
15 22 (1.16%) Ethernet
16 19 (1.00%) BGP
16 19 (1.00%) VLAN
17 18 (0.95%) Wireless
18 17 (0.90%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 112 (5.91%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.80%) PostgreSQL
3 74 (3.90%) MySQL
4 70 (3.69%) Oracle Database
5 62 (3.27%) MongoDB
5 62 (3.27%) Relational Database
6 50 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
7 42 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
8 38 (2.00%) Amazon Aurora
9 26 (1.37%) NoSQL
10 25 (1.32%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.05%) SAP HANA
12 19 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
13 18 (0.95%) Big Data
14 17 (0.90%) DB2
14 17 (0.90%) KDB
15 14 (0.74%) Kdb+
16 13 (0.69%) Power BI
16 13 (0.69%) Sybase ASE
17 12 (0.63%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 201 (10.60%) Jenkins
2 171 (9.02%) Git
3 169 (8.91%) GitLab
4 139 (7.33%) JIRA
5 33 (1.74%) Maven
6 28 (1.48%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.37%) Mockito
8 23 (1.21%) Eclipse
9 22 (1.16%) JUnit
10 18 (0.95%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
11 15 (0.79%) Artifactory
12 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.69%) Jaeger
13 13 (0.69%) jMock
13 13 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
15 10 (0.53%) Cucumber
16 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 378 (19.94%) Social Skills
2 258 (13.61%) Finance
3 198 (10.44%) Public Sector
4 151 (7.96%) Analytical Skills
5 114 (6.01%) Banking
6 74 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.27%) Military
8 25 (1.32%) Financial Institution
9 24 (1.27%) Front Office
9 24 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
11 22 (1.16%) Investment Banking
11 22 (1.16%) Retail
12 20 (1.05%) Law
12 20 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 16 (0.84%) Legal
15 15 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 14 (0.74%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 241 (12.71%) Senior
2 195 (10.28%) Developer
3 178 (9.39%) DevOps Engineer
4 171 (9.02%) Linux Engineer
5 134 (7.07%) Software Engineer
6 121 (6.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 109 (5.75%) Analyst
8 105 (5.54%) Architect
9 95 (5.01%) Lead
10 78 (4.11%) Administrator
11 76 (4.01%) Java Developer
12 71 (3.74%) AWS Engineer
13 66 (3.48%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 59 (3.11%) Consultant
15 57 (3.01%) Platform Engineer
16 56 (2.95%) Site Engineer
17 50 (2.64%) AWS DevOps
17 50 (2.64%) Security Engineer
18 48 (2.53%) Support Engineer
19 47 (2.48%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (5.01%) Kafka
2 82 (4.32%) REST
3 74 (3.90%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.69%) Middleware
5 49 (2.58%) LDAP
5 49 (2.58%) Spring Boot
6 48 (2.53%) Node.js
6 48 (2.53%) Spring
7 43 (2.27%) Web Services
8 42 (2.22%) RESTful
9 34 (1.79%) .NET
9 34 (1.79%) YAML
10 28 (1.48%) AngularJS
11 27 (1.42%) XML
12 26 (1.37%) JSON
12 26 (1.37%) SOAP
13 25 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
14 24 (1.27%) React
15 22 (1.16%) CSS
15 22 (1.16%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 150 (7.91%) Data Centre
2 100 (5.27%) Cloud Native
3 79 (4.17%) Linux Command Line
4 77 (4.06%) Onboarding
5 69 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
6 65 (3.43%) Management Information System
7 58 (3.06%) PKI
8 56 (2.95%) Replication
9 49 (2.58%) Hybrid Cloud
10 48 (2.53%) Public Cloud
11 46 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
12 37 (1.95%) Security Posture
13 35 (1.85%) Product Ownership
14 32 (1.69%) Enterprise Storage
15 31 (1.64%) Embedded Systems
16 30 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
16 30 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
17 26 (1.37%) Operational Technology
18 23 (1.21%) Cyber Threat
18 23 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 716 (37.76%) Windows
2 373 (19.67%) Unix
3 281 (14.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 174 (9.18%) Windows Server
5 92 (4.85%) Ubuntu
6 52 (2.74%) AIX
7 43 (2.27%) CentOS
7 43 (2.27%) Solaris
8 35 (1.85%) Embedded Linux
9 29 (1.53%) VMS
10 25 (1.32%) Android
11 23 (1.21%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (1.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (1.11%) Debian
14 20 (1.05%) Mac OS
15 14 (0.74%) SUSE
16 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.63%) Windows 10
17 10 (0.53%) Oracle Linux
17 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 530 (27.95%) CI/CD
2 447 (23.58%) DevOps
3 356 (18.78%) Agile
4 295 (15.56%) Problem-Solving
5 282 (14.87%) Infrastructure as Code
6 244 (12.87%) Containerisation
7 207 (10.92%) Software Engineering
8 182 (9.60%) Migration
9 179 (9.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 178 (9.39%) Observability
11 154 (8.12%) Performance Tuning
12 149 (7.86%) High Availability
13 144 (7.59%) Continuous Improvement
14 143 (7.54%) Root Cause Analysis
15 141 (7.44%) SIEM
16 133 (7.01%) Microservices
17 132 (6.96%) Computer Science
18 130 (6.86%) Incident Response
19 127 (6.70%) Cybersecurity
19 127 (6.70%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 624 (32.91%) Python
2 323 (17.04%) SQL
3 264 (13.92%) Bash
4 260 (13.71%) PowerShell
5 252 (13.29%) Java
6 156 (8.23%) Shell Script
7 127 (6.70%) C++
8 102 (5.38%) JavaScript
9 66 (3.48%) Perl
10 58 (3.06%) C
11 55 (2.90%) C#
12 47 (2.48%) Go
13 46 (2.43%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.37%) Ruby
14 26 (1.37%) TypeScript
15 25 (1.32%) Rust
16 21 (1.11%) Ada
16 21 (1.11%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 743 (39.19%) Security Cleared
2 545 (28.74%) SC Cleared
3 216 (11.39%) DV Cleared
4 183 (9.65%) Degree
5 77 (4.06%) Computer Science Degree
6 74 (3.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 55 (2.90%) Cisco Certification
8 49 (2.58%) CISSP
9 45 (2.37%) AWS Certification
9 45 (2.37%) CompTIA Security+
10 38 (2.00%) RHCE
11 32 (1.69%) Azure Certification
12 25 (1.32%) CCNA
12 25 (1.32%) CCNP
13 19 (1.00%) Oracle Certification
14 18 (0.95%) CISM
14 18 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
14 18 (0.95%) OCP
15 17 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
16 15 (0.79%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (4.27%) NIST
2 70 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 54 (2.85%) QA
4 49 (2.58%) SLA
5 29 (1.53%) GDPR
6 28 (1.48%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (1.27%) NCSC
8 18 (0.95%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (0.53%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.47%) GRC
12 8 (0.42%) Data Quality
12 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.37%) GLBA
14 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 5 (0.26%) DICOM
15 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 308 (16.24%) Docker
2 222 (11.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 185 (9.76%) Active Directory
4 77 (4.06%) Virtual Machines
5 70 (3.69%) vSphere
6 67 (3.53%) Hyper-V
7 62 (3.27%) VMware ESXi
8 49 (2.58%) NFS
9 42 (2.22%) VMware NSX
10 39 (2.06%) Firmware
11 28 (1.48%) KVM
12 24 (1.27%) GPFS
13 21 (1.11%) Oracle RAC
13 21 (1.11%) Postfix
14 14 (0.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 13 (0.69%) Ceph
16 9 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.37%) Squid
17 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 385 (20.31%) Ansible
2 382 (20.15%) Kubernetes
3 351 (18.51%) Terraform
4 176 (9.28%) Grafana
5 143 (7.54%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.80%) Puppet
7 41 (2.16%) vCenter Server
8 40 (2.11%) Progress Chef
9 36 (1.90%) Oracle RMAN
10 31 (1.64%) Podman
11 30 (1.58%) vRealize
12 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.37%) Kibana
14 25 (1.32%) Packer
15 24 (1.27%) Data Guard
15 24 (1.27%) ZABBIX
16 23 (1.21%) Nagios
17 21 (1.11%) Argo
18 20 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
18 20 (1.05%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 306 (16.14%) VMware
2 262 (13.82%) Oracle
3 252 (13.29%) Microsoft
4 224 (11.81%) Red Hat
5 184 (9.70%) Splunk
6 121 (6.38%) Cisco
7 95 (5.01%) IBM
8 81 (4.27%) ServiceNow
9 51 (2.69%) Palo Alto
10 46 (2.43%) CyberArk
11 38 (2.00%) Dell
12 37 (1.95%) F5
12 37 (1.95%) Google
13 35 (1.85%) SolarWinds
14 34 (1.79%) HP
14 34 (1.79%) NVIDIA
15 31 (1.64%) Citrix
16 29 (1.53%) BeyondTrust
16 29 (1.53%) SAP
17 26 (1.37%) Atlassian