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 27 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 50 32 34
Rank change year-on-year -18 +2 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,909 1,674 2,186
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.92% 5.86% 5.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.21% 42.30% 38.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,180 1,075 1,453
10th Percentile £340 £375 £340
25th Percentile £413 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £641
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £522 £544
% change year-on-year -6.20% -3.98% +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 4,747 3,957 5,734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.74% 13.85% 13.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,029 2,607 3,886
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £467 £470
Median % change year-on-year -1.61% -0.74% -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 - - -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 345 172 401
10th Percentile £15.55 £15.23 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.22 £21.95 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.46% -2.44% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.06 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.57 £19.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +81.92% -15.56% -28.00%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -21 1,596 £513 -6.82% 723
UK excluding London -16 1,148 £490 -6.20% 575
London -47 544 £550 -8.33% 219
Work from Home -30 479 £500 -4.76% 285
South East -2 327 £500 -6.89% 187
North of England -15 285 £480 -8.57% 98
South West -8 159 £538 -10.42% 118
Midlands -21 150 £500 +0.05% 47
Yorkshire -13 149 £478 -12.18% 23
West Midlands -14 130 £493 -6.19% 24
North West -17 122 £483 -1.83% 56
Scotland -21 100 £463 -2.01% 33
East of England -11 91 £475 +0.26% 82
Wales 0 27 £465 -20.65% 16
East Midlands -31 17 £530 +16.61% 23
Northern Ireland +8 14 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -21 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 79 (4.14%) Confluence
2 51 (2.67%) Apache
3 31 (1.62%) nginx
4 25 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.05%) Tomcat
7 19 (1.00%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.89%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.73%) 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
15 6 (0.31%) IIS
15 6 (0.31%) TPMS
15 6 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 23 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.58%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.052%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.052%) Odoo
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
6 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 529 (27.71%) AWS
2 384 (20.12%) Azure
3 164 (8.59%) GitHub
4 119 (6.23%) OpenShift
5 112 (5.87%) GCP
6 94 (4.92%) GitHub Actions
7 83 (4.35%) Amazon EC2
8 82 (4.30%) Amazon S3
9 69 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
10 67 (3.51%) Amazon EKS
11 61 (3.20%) AWS CloudFormation
12 60 (3.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 60 (3.14%) Serverless
13 52 (2.72%) AWS Lambda
14 44 (2.30%) Entra ID
14 44 (2.30%) IaaS
15 41 (2.15%) Microsoft 365
16 40 (2.10%) PaaS
17 38 (1.99%) Amazon ECS
18 37 (1.94%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 178 (9.32%) Firewall
2 138 (7.23%) DNS
3 92 (4.82%) TCP/IP
4 76 (3.98%) VPN
5 66 (3.46%) SAN
6 62 (3.25%) Network Security
7 48 (2.51%) WAN
8 45 (2.36%) DHCP
9 41 (2.15%) LAN
10 35 (1.83%) SNMP
10 35 (1.83%) VSAN
11 33 (1.73%) SSH
12 32 (1.68%) SSL
13 30 (1.57%) HTTP
14 26 (1.36%) NAS
15 22 (1.15%) Ethernet
16 19 (1.00%) BGP
16 19 (1.00%) VLAN
17 18 (0.94%) Wireless
18 17 (0.89%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (5.97%) SQL Server
2 112 (5.87%) PostgreSQL
3 75 (3.93%) MySQL
4 70 (3.67%) Oracle Database
5 63 (3.30%) MongoDB
6 62 (3.25%) Relational Database
7 49 (2.57%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.20%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (1.99%) Amazon Aurora
10 27 (1.41%) NoSQL
11 25 (1.31%) DynamoDB
12 20 (1.05%) SAP HANA
13 19 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
14 18 (0.94%) Big Data
15 17 (0.89%) DB2
15 17 (0.89%) KDB
16 14 (0.73%) Kdb+
16 14 (0.73%) Power BI
17 13 (0.68%) Sybase ASE
18 12 (0.63%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 202 (10.58%) Jenkins
2 171 (8.96%) Git
3 169 (8.85%) GitLab
4 139 (7.28%) JIRA
5 33 (1.73%) Maven
6 28 (1.47%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.36%) Mockito
8 23 (1.20%) Eclipse
9 21 (1.10%) JUnit
10 18 (0.94%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.94%) Sonatype Nexus
11 15 (0.79%) Artifactory
12 14 (0.73%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.73%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.68%) Jaeger
13 13 (0.68%) jMock
13 13 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
15 10 (0.52%) Cucumber
16 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 384 (20.12%) Social Skills
2 261 (13.67%) Finance
3 202 (10.58%) Public Sector
4 151 (7.91%) Analytical Skills
5 116 (6.08%) Banking
6 76 (3.98%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.25%) Military
8 25 (1.31%) Financial Institution
9 24 (1.26%) Front Office
9 24 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.20%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.20%) Retail
11 21 (1.10%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.05%) Law
12 20 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
14 16 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 16 (0.84%) Legal
15 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 244 (12.78%) Senior
2 193 (10.11%) Developer
3 180 (9.43%) DevOps Engineer
4 177 (9.27%) Linux Engineer
5 135 (7.07%) Software Engineer
6 124 (6.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 107 (5.61%) Analyst
8 105 (5.50%) Architect
9 98 (5.13%) Lead
10 78 (4.09%) Administrator
11 75 (3.93%) Java Developer
12 73 (3.82%) AWS Engineer
13 66 (3.46%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 60 (3.14%) Consultant
15 57 (2.99%) Platform Engineer
16 56 (2.93%) Site Engineer
17 51 (2.67%) AWS DevOps
17 51 (2.67%) Security Engineer
18 48 (2.51%) Support Engineer
19 47 (2.46%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 94 (4.92%) Kafka
2 81 (4.24%) REST
3 75 (3.93%) Elastic Stack
4 70 (3.67%) Middleware
5 50 (2.62%) LDAP
6 49 (2.57%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.51%) Node.js
7 48 (2.51%) Spring
8 43 (2.25%) Web Services
9 42 (2.20%) RESTful
10 36 (1.89%) .NET
11 34 (1.78%) YAML
12 28 (1.47%) AngularJS
13 26 (1.36%) JSON
13 26 (1.36%) XML
14 25 (1.31%) ActiveMQ
14 25 (1.31%) SOAP
15 24 (1.26%) React
16 22 (1.15%) CSS
17 21 (1.10%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 153 (8.01%) Data Centre
2 100 (5.24%) Cloud Native
3 78 (4.09%) Linux Command Line
3 78 (4.09%) Onboarding
4 69 (3.61%) Distributed Systems
5 64 (3.35%) Management Information System
6 63 (3.30%) PKI
7 57 (2.99%) Replication
8 49 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
8 49 (2.57%) Public Cloud
9 46 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
10 37 (1.94%) Security Posture
11 36 (1.89%) Product Ownership
12 33 (1.73%) Enterprise Storage
13 31 (1.62%) Embedded Systems
14 30 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
14 30 (1.57%) Security Operations Centre
15 26 (1.36%) Operational Technology
16 24 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
17 23 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 724 (37.93%) Windows
2 376 (19.70%) Unix
3 285 (14.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 177 (9.27%) Windows Server
5 93 (4.87%) Ubuntu
6 54 (2.83%) AIX
7 43 (2.25%) CentOS
7 43 (2.25%) Solaris
8 35 (1.83%) Embedded Linux
9 29 (1.52%) VMS
10 25 (1.31%) Android
11 24 (1.26%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (1.15%) Debian
12 22 (1.15%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (1.05%) Mac OS
14 14 (0.73%) SUSE
15 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
15 12 (0.63%) Windows 10
16 11 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
17 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 531 (27.82%) CI/CD
2 451 (23.62%) DevOps
3 354 (18.54%) Agile
4 294 (15.40%) Problem-Solving
5 284 (14.88%) Infrastructure as Code
6 243 (12.73%) Containerisation
7 207 (10.84%) Software Engineering
8 185 (9.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 184 (9.64%) Migration
10 181 (9.48%) Observability
11 158 (8.28%) Performance Tuning
12 155 (8.12%) High Availability
13 147 (7.70%) Continuous Improvement
14 144 (7.54%) Root Cause Analysis
14 144 (7.54%) SIEM
15 133 (6.97%) Computer Science
16 132 (6.91%) Incident Response
16 132 (6.91%) ITIL
17 131 (6.86%) Microservices
18 128 (6.71%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 626 (32.79%) Python
2 323 (16.92%) SQL
3 269 (14.09%) Bash
4 264 (13.83%) PowerShell
5 250 (13.10%) Java
6 157 (8.22%) Shell Script
7 127 (6.65%) C++
8 102 (5.34%) JavaScript
9 66 (3.46%) Perl
10 59 (3.09%) C
11 56 (2.93%) C#
12 48 (2.51%) Go
13 46 (2.41%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.36%) Ruby
14 26 (1.36%) TypeScript
15 23 (1.20%) Rust
16 21 (1.10%) Ada
16 21 (1.10%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 748 (39.18%) Security Cleared
2 548 (28.71%) SC Cleared
3 220 (11.52%) DV Cleared
4 184 (9.64%) Degree
5 78 (4.09%) Computer Science Degree
6 73 (3.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 56 (2.93%) Cisco Certification
8 49 (2.57%) CISSP
9 45 (2.36%) AWS Certification
9 45 (2.36%) CompTIA Security+
10 37 (1.94%) RHCE
11 32 (1.68%) Azure Certification
12 26 (1.36%) CCNP
13 25 (1.31%) CCNA
14 19 (1.00%) Oracle Certification
15 18 (0.94%) CISM
15 18 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.94%) OCP
16 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
17 15 (0.79%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (4.24%) NIST
2 70 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.78%) QA
4 50 (2.62%) SLA
5 28 (1.47%) Cyber Essentials
5 28 (1.47%) GDPR
6 24 (1.26%) NCSC
7 17 (0.89%) PCI DSS
8 11 (0.58%) Disclosure Scotland
8 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (0.52%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.47%) GRC
11 8 (0.42%) Data Quality
11 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
13 6 (0.31%) GLBA
13 6 (0.31%) ISO 31000
13 6 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
System Software
1 311 (16.29%) Docker
2 224 (11.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 192 (10.06%) Active Directory
4 78 (4.09%) Virtual Machines
5 68 (3.56%) vSphere
6 67 (3.51%) Hyper-V
7 62 (3.25%) VMware ESXi
8 49 (2.57%) NFS
9 45 (2.36%) VMware NSX
10 40 (2.10%) Firmware
11 29 (1.52%) KVM
12 23 (1.20%) GPFS
12 23 (1.20%) Oracle RAC
13 21 (1.10%) Postfix
14 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 13 (0.68%) Ceph
16 9 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.42%) Squid
18 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 385 (20.17%) Ansible
2 383 (20.06%) Kubernetes
3 352 (18.44%) Terraform
4 176 (9.22%) Grafana
5 144 (7.54%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.77%) Puppet
7 41 (2.15%) Progress Chef
7 41 (2.15%) vCenter Server
8 37 (1.94%) Oracle RMAN
9 30 (1.57%) Podman
10 29 (1.52%) Red Hat Satellite
11 28 (1.47%) vRealize
12 27 (1.41%) Packer
13 26 (1.36%) Kibana
14 25 (1.31%) Data Guard
15 24 (1.26%) ZABBIX
16 23 (1.20%) Nagios
17 21 (1.10%) Argo
17 21 (1.10%) Tivoli
18 20 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 311 (16.29%) VMware
2 262 (13.72%) Oracle
3 252 (13.20%) Microsoft
4 225 (11.79%) Red Hat
5 185 (9.69%) Splunk
6 123 (6.44%) Cisco
7 93 (4.87%) IBM
8 81 (4.24%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.78%) Palo Alto
10 49 (2.57%) CyberArk
11 39 (2.04%) Dell
12 38 (1.99%) Google
13 37 (1.94%) F5
14 35 (1.83%) SolarWinds
15 34 (1.78%) NVIDIA
16 33 (1.73%) Citrix
16 33 (1.73%) HP
17 30 (1.57%) SAP
18 29 (1.52%) BeyondTrust
19 26 (1.36%) NetApp