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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,080 1,853 2,200
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.62% 5.70%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.66% 41.63% 40.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,297 1,129 1,389
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -4.11%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £635
90th Percentile £711 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 64 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £54.08 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.63 £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 5,245 4,451 5,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.76% 13.51% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,324 2,831 3,544
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £330
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 £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 363 271 306
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.80 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £25.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +3.36% -47.37% +47.29%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 1,739 £525 - 1,228
UK excluding London -20 1,190 £500 - 807
London -38 670 £537 -6.61% 534
Work from Home -29 545 £500 -3.66% 487
South East -4 337 £518 +3.50% 246
North of England -26 287 £494 -1.20% 155
South West 0 192 £562 -2.22% 137
North West -22 144 £485 +21.25% 88
Scotland -13 133 £450 -10.00% 39
Yorkshire -28 124 £500 -4.76% 42
Midlands -44 121 £470 -6.00% 84
West Midlands -41 100 £470 -6.00% 47
East of England -13 98 £475 -5.00% 139
Wales +3 28 £465 +3.33% 8
North East -17 26 £470 -18.26% 25
East Midlands -6 18 £500 +19.05% 36
Northern Ireland -5 2 - - 19

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 (3.32%) Confluence
2 50 (2.40%) Apache
3 30 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.39%) nginx
5 23 (1.11%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.06%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.96%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
9 16 (0.77%) Tomcat
9 16 (0.77%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.72%) JBoss
11 14 (0.67%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.38%) IIS
14 6 (0.29%) CMS
14 6 (0.29%) NetWeaver
14 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
15 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 28 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
4 3 (0.14%) Simulink
5 2 (0.096%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.096%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 8 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle EBS R12
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
1 599 (28.80%) AWS
2 514 (24.71%) Azure
3 171 (8.22%) GCP
4 161 (7.74%) GitHub
5 103 (4.95%) OpenShift
6 102 (4.90%) Entra ID
7 98 (4.71%) GitHub Actions
8 92 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
9 89 (4.28%) Amazon S3
10 82 (3.94%) Amazon EC2
11 65 (3.13%) Serverless
12 61 (2.93%) Amazon EKS
12 61 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
13 57 (2.74%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 55 (2.64%) AWS CloudFormation
16 53 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.45%) IaaS
18 42 (2.02%) SaaS
19 39 (1.88%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 229 (11.01%) DNS
2 223 (10.72%) Firewall
3 142 (6.83%) TCP/IP
4 127 (6.11%) DHCP
5 88 (4.23%) VPN
6 84 (4.04%) SAN
7 77 (3.70%) Network Security
8 51 (2.45%) WAN
9 50 (2.40%) SSL
10 45 (2.16%) SSH
11 44 (2.12%) VSAN
12 41 (1.97%) VLAN
13 40 (1.92%) HTTP
14 38 (1.83%) LAN
15 30 (1.44%) SNMP
16 26 (1.25%) Kerberos
17 25 (1.20%) NAS
18 23 (1.11%) HTTPS
19 21 (1.01%) BGP
20 19 (0.91%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.67%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (5.53%) SQL Server
3 99 (4.76%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.17%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.13%) MySQL
6 53 (2.55%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
8 42 (2.02%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.73%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.63%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
12 30 (1.44%) RDBMS
13 26 (1.25%) Big Data
14 21 (1.01%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.96%) DynamoDB
16 19 (0.91%) Power BI
17 18 (0.87%) Redis
18 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
18 17 (0.82%) Oracle Exadata
18 17 (0.82%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 241 (11.59%) Git
2 237 (11.39%) Jenkins
3 199 (9.57%) GitLab
4 152 (7.31%) JIRA
5 32 (1.54%) Maven
6 31 (1.49%) Bitbucket
6 31 (1.49%) SonarQube
7 27 (1.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 22 (1.06%) Artifactory
9 21 (1.01%) Mockito
9 21 (1.01%) 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 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.43%) LoadRunner
15 8 (0.38%) eggPlant
15 8 (0.38%) JMeter
General
1 436 (20.96%) Social Skills
2 305 (14.66%) Finance
3 243 (11.68%) Analytical Skills
4 175 (8.41%) Public Sector
5 159 (7.64%) Banking
6 84 (4.04%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.16%) Telecoms
8 37 (1.78%) Front Office
9 36 (1.73%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.25%) Aerospace
10 26 (1.25%) Military
11 25 (1.20%) Legal
12 20 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 20 (0.96%) Retail
13 19 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 18 (0.87%) Law
15 14 (0.67%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.48%) Aviation
17 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 303 (14.57%) Senior
2 239 (11.49%) Linux Engineer
3 201 (9.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 181 (8.70%) Developer
5 180 (8.65%) DevOps Engineer
6 107 (5.14%) Architect
7 98 (4.71%) Software Engineer
8 97 (4.66%) Platform Engineer
9 87 (4.18%) Consultant
10 81 (3.89%) Lead
11 78 (3.75%) Support Engineer
12 75 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
13 73 (3.51%) Analyst
14 70 (3.37%) Administrator
15 67 (3.22%) Java Developer
16 65 (3.13%) AWS Engineer
17 62 (2.98%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 57 (2.74%) Systems Engineer
19 53 (2.55%) Network Engineer
20 51 (2.45%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 490 (23.56%) Terraform
2 130 (6.25%) Kafka
3 116 (5.58%) REST
4 72 (3.46%) Elastic Stack
4 72 (3.46%) Middleware
5 67 (3.22%) .NET
6 55 (2.64%) RESTful
7 49 (2.36%) Spring
8 43 (2.07%) Spring Boot
9 38 (1.83%) LDAP
10 36 (1.73%) JSON
10 36 (1.73%) Web Services
11 35 (1.68%) XML
12 31 (1.49%) YAML
13 30 (1.44%) HTML
13 30 (1.44%) SOAP
14 25 (1.20%) ARM Templates
14 25 (1.20%) RabbitMQ
14 25 (1.20%) React
15 24 (1.15%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 143 (6.88%) Onboarding
2 137 (6.59%) Cloud Native
3 131 (6.30%) Data Centre
4 107 (5.14%) PKI
5 105 (5.05%) Linux Command Line
6 93 (4.47%) Replication
7 83 (3.99%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
9 67 (3.22%) Public Cloud
10 57 (2.74%) Management Information System
11 45 (2.16%) Security Posture
12 44 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
13 40 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
14 39 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
14 39 (1.88%) Enterprise Storage
15 36 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
15 36 (1.73%) Private Cloud
16 35 (1.68%) Clustering
17 34 (1.63%) Operational Technology
18 31 (1.49%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 779 (37.45%) Windows
2 419 (20.14%) Unix
3 358 (17.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 244 (11.73%) Windows Server
5 114 (5.48%) Ubuntu
6 65 (3.13%) AIX
7 52 (2.50%) CentOS
7 52 (2.50%) Solaris
8 40 (1.92%) Embedded Linux
9 28 (1.35%) SUSE
9 28 (1.35%) VMS
10 25 (1.20%) Windows 10
11 23 (1.11%) Windows Server 2019
12 20 (0.96%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.91%) Oracle Linux
13 19 (0.91%) Rocky
14 16 (0.77%) Debian
14 16 (0.77%) Mac OS
15 12 (0.58%) Android
15 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 601 (28.89%) CI/CD
2 528 (25.38%) DevOps
3 423 (20.34%) Infrastructure as Code
4 366 (17.60%) Agile
5 316 (15.19%) Problem-Solving
6 294 (14.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 267 (12.84%) Containerisation
8 244 (11.73%) Continuous Improvement
9 238 (11.44%) Migration
10 226 (10.87%) Observability
11 218 (10.48%) Platform Engineering
12 204 (9.81%) Root Cause Analysis
13 203 (9.76%) High Availability
14 196 (9.42%) Software Engineering
15 181 (8.70%) Performance Tuning
16 173 (8.32%) ITIL
17 165 (7.93%) Test Automation
18 161 (7.74%) Configuration Management
19 150 (7.21%) AI
20 149 (7.16%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 746 (35.87%) Python
2 409 (19.66%) Bash
3 407 (19.57%) PowerShell
4 373 (17.93%) SQL
5 241 (11.59%) Java
6 152 (7.31%) Shell Script
7 125 (6.01%) C++
8 79 (3.80%) C
9 73 (3.51%) JavaScript
10 71 (3.41%) Perl
11 69 (3.32%) C#
12 61 (2.93%) PL/SQL
13 51 (2.45%) Go
14 42 (2.02%) Bicep
15 25 (1.20%) Search Processing Language
16 24 (1.15%) Groovy
17 18 (0.87%) Ada
18 16 (0.77%) Rust
18 16 (0.77%) TypeScript
19 15 (0.72%) Korn
Qualifications
1 804 (38.65%) Security Cleared
2 592 (28.46%) SC Cleared
3 243 (11.68%) DV Cleared
4 180 (8.65%) Degree
5 71 (3.41%) AWS Certification
6 62 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 55 (2.64%) Azure Certification
8 55 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
9 54 (2.60%) CISSP
10 22 (1.06%) CCNP
10 22 (1.06%) RHCE
11 21 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
12 20 (0.96%) CCNA
12 20 (0.96%) CISM
13 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
15 16 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.77%) ISTQB
16 14 (0.67%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (3.46%) NIST
2 68 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 68 (3.27%) QA
3 32 (1.54%) SLA
4 26 (1.25%) Data Quality
5 21 (1.01%) NCSC
6 19 (0.91%) Disclosure Scotland
7 17 (0.82%) GDPR
8 16 (0.77%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.77%) ISO 20022
9 10 (0.48%) GRC
9 10 (0.48%) PCI DSS
10 9 (0.43%) HIPAA
10 9 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
12 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 342 (16.44%) Docker
2 276 (13.27%) Active Directory
3 256 (12.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (4.42%) Hyper-V
5 89 (4.28%) vSphere
6 77 (3.70%) Virtual Machines
7 69 (3.32%) VMware ESXi
8 63 (3.03%) VMware NSX
9 43 (2.07%) Firmware
10 41 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
11 39 (1.88%) NFS
12 27 (1.30%) KVM
13 16 (0.77%) Ceph
13 16 (0.77%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.72%) Postfix
15 14 (0.67%) Embedded Firmware
16 12 (0.58%) GPFS
17 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 10 (0.48%) Squid
19 8 (0.38%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 460 (22.12%) Ansible
2 442 (21.25%) Kubernetes
3 184 (8.85%) Grafana
4 164 (7.88%) Prometheus
5 90 (4.33%) Puppet
6 63 (3.03%) Progress Chef
7 50 (2.40%) Oracle RMAN
8 43 (2.07%) SCCM
9 41 (1.97%) vCenter Server
10 40 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 33 (1.59%) Nagios
12 28 (1.35%) Kibana
13 27 (1.30%) Microsoft Intune
13 27 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 27 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 26 (1.25%) Packer
15 25 (1.20%) NetBackup
16 23 (1.11%) Podman
16 23 (1.11%) VxRail
17 22 (1.06%) Istio
Vendors
1 358 (17.21%) VMware
2 331 (15.91%) Microsoft
3 311 (14.95%) Oracle
4 225 (10.82%) Red Hat
5 164 (7.88%) Splunk
6 124 (5.96%) Cisco
7 115 (5.53%) ServiceNow
8 96 (4.62%) IBM
9 78 (3.75%) CyberArk
10 75 (3.61%) Google
11 51 (2.45%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.21%) NetApp
13 45 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.12%) SAP
15 41 (1.97%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.78%) F5
17 36 (1.73%) Dell
18 35 (1.68%) HP
19 33 (1.59%) Citrix
19 33 (1.59%) Dynatrace