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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -20 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,068 1,814 2,216
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.54% 5.71%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.66% 41.24% 40.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,287 1,106 1,410
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.87%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £630
90th Percentile £713 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 63 115
10th Percentile £43.39 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £53.90 £64.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +10.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,214 4,399 5,424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.43% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,300 2,796 3,545
10th Percentile £192 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £668 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £449 £450
% change year-on-year +0.33% -0.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 270 321
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -8.55% -33.59%
75th Percentile £63.75 £57.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.86 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £24.83 £38.50
% change year-on-year +4.07% -35.51% +31.40%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -23 1,731 £525 - 1,561
UK excluding London -20 1,176 £500 - 810
London -34 675 £537 -6.61% 860
Work from Home -29 539 £500 -3.85% 554
South East -8 336 £518 +3.50% 213
North of England -24 282 £497 +1.02% 139
South West +2 189 £555 -3.52% 176
North West -23 141 £485 +21.25% 79
Scotland -15 132 £450 -10.00% 54
Yorkshire -27 123 £500 -0.10% 34
Midlands -44 118 £470 -6.00% 76
West Midlands -42 97 £470 -6.00% 39
East of England -17 96 £475 -5.00% 150
Wales +3 28 £465 +55.00% 7
North East -23 25 £471 -18.04% 27
East Midlands -9 18 £500 +14.94% 36
Northern Ireland -7 2 - - 17

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 69 (3.34%) Confluence
2 50 (2.42%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.40%) nginx
5 23 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.11%) OpenStack
6 21 (1.02%) Apache Spark
7 20 (0.97%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
9 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
9 16 (0.77%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.73%) JBoss
11 14 (0.68%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 9 (0.44%) IIS
14 6 (0.29%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) CMS
15 5 (0.24%) MTS
Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) InDesign
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 594 (28.72%) AWS
2 506 (24.47%) Azure
3 169 (8.17%) GCP
4 159 (7.69%) GitHub
5 103 (4.98%) Entra ID
6 99 (4.79%) OpenShift
7 95 (4.59%) GitHub Actions
8 89 (4.30%) Azure DevOps
9 88 (4.26%) Amazon S3
10 81 (3.92%) Amazon EC2
11 64 (3.09%) Serverless
12 61 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
13 59 (2.85%) Amazon EKS
14 56 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (2.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 55 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
16 52 (2.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.47%) IaaS
18 43 (2.08%) SaaS
19 37 (1.79%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 224 (10.83%) DNS
2 219 (10.59%) Firewall
3 137 (6.62%) TCP/IP
4 123 (5.95%) DHCP
5 88 (4.26%) VPN
6 83 (4.01%) SAN
7 78 (3.77%) Network Security
8 51 (2.47%) WAN
9 50 (2.42%) SSL
10 45 (2.18%) SSH
11 44 (2.13%) VSAN
12 42 (2.03%) HTTP
13 40 (1.93%) LAN
14 39 (1.89%) VLAN
15 30 (1.45%) SNMP
16 26 (1.26%) Kerberos
16 26 (1.26%) NAS
17 23 (1.11%) HTTPS
18 21 (1.02%) BGP
19 20 (0.97%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.71%) SQL Server
2 116 (5.61%) PostgreSQL
3 98 (4.74%) Oracle Database
4 67 (3.24%) MySQL
5 66 (3.19%) Relational Database
6 53 (2.56%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.03%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.74%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.64%) Elasticsearch
11 32 (1.55%) Data Warehouse
12 30 (1.45%) RDBMS
13 25 (1.21%) Big Data
14 19 (0.92%) Data Lake
14 19 (0.92%) DynamoDB
14 19 (0.92%) Power BI
15 18 (0.87%) Redis
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.82%) Oracle Exadata
16 17 (0.82%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 237 (11.46%) Git
2 234 (11.32%) Jenkins
3 191 (9.24%) GitLab
4 150 (7.25%) JIRA
5 32 (1.55%) Maven
6 31 (1.50%) Bitbucket
7 29 (1.40%) SonarQube
8 26 (1.26%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.02%) Mockito
9 21 (1.02%) Selenium
10 16 (0.77%) JUnit
11 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.44%) LoadRunner
15 8 (0.39%) Cucumber
15 8 (0.39%) JMeter
General
1 430 (20.79%) Social Skills
2 306 (14.80%) Finance
3 243 (11.75%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 161 (7.79%) Banking
6 82 (3.97%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.08%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.79%) Front Office
9 36 (1.74%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.31%) Military
11 25 (1.21%) Legal
12 24 (1.16%) Aerospace
13 21 (1.02%) Retail
14 19 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 19 (0.92%) Law
15 18 (0.87%) Manufacturing
16 14 (0.68%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
18 9 (0.44%) Aviation
18 9 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 301 (14.56%) Senior
2 239 (11.56%) Linux Engineer
3 198 (9.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 181 (8.75%) Developer
5 174 (8.41%) DevOps Engineer
6 108 (5.22%) Architect
7 98 (4.74%) Software Engineer
8 97 (4.69%) Platform Engineer
9 84 (4.06%) Consultant
10 80 (3.87%) Lead
11 77 (3.72%) Support Engineer
12 74 (3.58%) Analyst
12 74 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
13 68 (3.29%) Java Developer
14 65 (3.14%) Administrator
15 63 (3.05%) AWS Engineer
16 59 (2.85%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 55 (2.66%) Network Engineer
18 54 (2.61%) Systems Engineer
19 51 (2.47%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 477 (23.07%) Terraform
2 128 (6.19%) Kafka
3 114 (5.51%) REST
4 72 (3.48%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.48%) Middleware
5 67 (3.24%) .NET
6 56 (2.71%) RESTful
7 50 (2.42%) Spring
8 43 (2.08%) Spring Boot
9 38 (1.84%) LDAP
10 36 (1.74%) Web Services
11 35 (1.69%) XML
12 34 (1.64%) JSON
13 30 (1.45%) HTML
13 30 (1.45%) SOAP
13 30 (1.45%) YAML
14 25 (1.21%) RabbitMQ
15 24 (1.16%) ARM Templates
15 24 (1.16%) FastAPI
15 24 (1.16%) React
Miscellaneous
1 143 (6.91%) Onboarding
2 133 (6.43%) Data Centre
3 130 (6.29%) Cloud Native
4 105 (5.08%) PKI
5 103 (4.98%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.55%) Replication
7 84 (4.06%) Distributed Systems
8 68 (3.29%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.24%) Public Cloud
10 55 (2.66%) Management Information System
11 45 (2.18%) Security Posture
12 44 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
13 41 (1.98%) Embedded Systems
14 40 (1.93%) Enterprise Storage
15 39 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
16 37 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
17 36 (1.74%) Private Cloud
18 34 (1.64%) Clustering
18 34 (1.64%) Product Ownership
19 32 (1.55%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 779 (37.67%) Windows
2 414 (20.02%) Unix
3 351 (16.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 239 (11.56%) Windows Server
5 116 (5.61%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.09%) AIX
7 52 (2.51%) CentOS
8 51 (2.47%) Solaris
9 40 (1.93%) Embedded Linux
10 27 (1.31%) SUSE
11 26 (1.26%) VMS
12 25 (1.21%) Windows 10
13 23 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
14 19 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
14 19 (0.92%) Windows Server 2016
15 18 (0.87%) Rocky
16 17 (0.82%) Mac OS
17 16 (0.77%) Debian
18 12 (0.58%) Android
18 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 587 (28.38%) CI/CD
2 519 (25.10%) DevOps
3 409 (19.78%) Infrastructure as Code
4 361 (17.46%) Agile
5 313 (15.14%) Problem-Solving
6 290 (14.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 263 (12.72%) Containerisation
8 242 (11.70%) Continuous Improvement
9 240 (11.61%) Migration
10 219 (10.59%) Observability
11 213 (10.30%) Platform Engineering
12 208 (10.06%) High Availability
13 201 (9.72%) Root Cause Analysis
14 195 (9.43%) Software Engineering
15 182 (8.80%) Performance Tuning
16 172 (8.32%) ITIL
17 165 (7.98%) Test Automation
18 159 (7.69%) Configuration Management
19 151 (7.30%) AI
20 149 (7.21%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 736 (35.59%) Python
2 403 (19.49%) Bash
3 400 (19.34%) PowerShell
4 372 (17.99%) SQL
5 244 (11.80%) Java
6 149 (7.21%) Shell Script
7 127 (6.14%) C++
8 79 (3.82%) C
9 75 (3.63%) JavaScript
10 72 (3.48%) Perl
11 69 (3.34%) C#
12 62 (3.00%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.37%) Go
14 42 (2.03%) Bicep
15 24 (1.16%) Search Processing Language
16 23 (1.11%) Groovy
17 19 (0.92%) Ada
18 16 (0.77%) Rust
18 16 (0.77%) TypeScript
19 15 (0.73%) Korn
Qualifications
1 794 (38.39%) Security Cleared
2 584 (28.24%) SC Cleared
3 238 (11.51%) DV Cleared
4 178 (8.61%) Degree
5 71 (3.43%) AWS Certification
6 61 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 56 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
7 56 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
8 54 (2.61%) Azure Certification
9 53 (2.56%) CISSP
10 23 (1.11%) CCNP
11 22 (1.06%) RHCE
12 20 (0.97%) CCNA
12 20 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
13 19 (0.92%) CISM
14 17 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
14 17 (0.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
16 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (3.48%) NIST
2 68 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (3.29%) QA
3 32 (1.55%) SLA
4 26 (1.26%) Data Quality
5 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
5 20 (0.97%) NCSC
6 17 (0.82%) GDPR
7 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
7 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
8 11 (0.53%) PCI DSS
9 10 (0.48%) GRC
10 9 (0.44%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.39%) ISO 15022
12 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 4 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
15 4 (0.19%) JSP 440
System Software
1 335 (16.20%) Docker
2 277 (13.39%) Active Directory
3 255 (12.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (4.45%) Hyper-V
5 89 (4.30%) vSphere
6 77 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
7 68 (3.29%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.05%) VMware NSX
9 43 (2.08%) Firmware
10 40 (1.93%) Oracle RAC
11 37 (1.79%) NFS
12 28 (1.35%) KVM
13 16 (0.77%) Ceph
13 16 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.73%) Postfix
15 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
16 11 (0.53%) GPFS
16 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.48%) Squid
18 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 452 (21.86%) Ansible
2 431 (20.84%) Kubernetes
3 176 (8.51%) Grafana
4 157 (7.59%) Prometheus
5 89 (4.30%) Puppet
6 63 (3.05%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.42%) Oracle RMAN
8 43 (2.08%) SCCM
9 41 (1.98%) vCenter Server
10 40 (1.93%) Data Guard
11 33 (1.60%) Nagios
12 28 (1.35%) Kibana
13 27 (1.31%) Microsoft Intune
13 27 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.31%) ZABBIX
14 26 (1.26%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.26%) Packer
15 23 (1.11%) VxRail
16 22 (1.06%) Podman
16 22 (1.06%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 356 (17.21%) VMware
2 331 (16.01%) Microsoft
3 311 (15.04%) Oracle
4 222 (10.74%) Red Hat
5 160 (7.74%) Splunk
6 124 (6.00%) Cisco
7 114 (5.51%) ServiceNow
8 95 (4.59%) IBM
9 79 (3.82%) CyberArk
10 74 (3.58%) Google
11 50 (2.42%) SolarWinds
12 47 (2.27%) NetApp
13 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.13%) SAP
15 43 (2.08%) Palo Alto
16 39 (1.89%) F5
17 36 (1.74%) HP
18 35 (1.69%) Dell
19 33 (1.60%) Citrix
19 33 (1.60%) Dynatrace