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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 35 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,030 1,817 2,234
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.51% 5.74%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.36% 41.58% 40.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,271 1,131 1,446
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -5.70%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £705 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 57 121
10th Percentile £41.71 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.02
% change year-on-year - -3.01% +7.23%

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 5,157 4,370 5,452
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.66% 13.26% 14.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,269 2,796 3,611
10th Percentile £193 £192 £200
25th Percentile £325 £311 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £450 £474
% change year-on-year +2.00% -5.06% +5.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 358 259 333
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.92 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% -12.73% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.15 £67.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.56 £46.25
% change year-on-year +18.17% -51.22% +68.18%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -24 1,719 £525 - 2,280
UK excluding London -15 1,206 £500 - 1,088
London -49 615 £550 -5.17% 1,335
Work from Home -31 541 £500 -3.15% 772
South East -1 347 £525 +3.96% 335
North of England -15 302 £500 - 188
South West +2 192 £550 -4.35% 165
North West -10 157 £500 +25.00% 115
Midlands -25 131 £471 -0.79% 79
Yorkshire -26 125 £500 -4.76% 38
Scotland -26 110 £425 -15.00% 81
West Midlands -29 110 £470 -3.59% 48
East of England -9 101 £479 -2.30% 217
Wales +10 29 £465 +64.60% 15
North East -19 27 £490 -14.78% 36
East Midlands -6 18 £513 +22.02% 31
Northern Ireland +1 2 - - 31

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 (3.99%) Confluence
2 52 (2.56%) Apache
3 30 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.43%) nginx
5 23 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.99%) Apache Spark
6 20 (0.99%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.94%) OpenStack
7 19 (0.94%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.89%) SAS
9 14 (0.69%) JBoss
10 13 (0.64%) SharePoint
11 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
12 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CICS
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
Applications
1 20 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.20%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.099%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 607 (29.90%) AWS
2 495 (24.38%) Azure
3 160 (7.88%) GCP
4 157 (7.73%) GitHub
5 104 (5.12%) OpenShift
6 96 (4.73%) GitHub Actions
7 92 (4.53%) Amazon S3
8 90 (4.43%) Entra ID
9 87 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
10 86 (4.24%) Amazon EC2
11 62 (3.05%) Serverless
12 61 (3.00%) Amazon EKS
13 59 (2.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 55 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (2.71%) Microsoft 365
14 55 (2.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 54 (2.66%) AWS CloudFormation
16 52 (2.56%) IaaS
17 39 (1.92%) SaaS
18 38 (1.87%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 221 (10.89%) Firewall
2 212 (10.44%) DNS
3 134 (6.60%) TCP/IP
4 110 (5.42%) DHCP
5 79 (3.89%) VPN
6 74 (3.65%) Network Security
6 74 (3.65%) SAN
7 51 (2.51%) SSL
8 47 (2.32%) VSAN
8 47 (2.32%) WAN
9 39 (1.92%) LAN
10 38 (1.87%) HTTP
11 37 (1.82%) SSH
12 35 (1.72%) VLAN
13 31 (1.53%) SNMP
14 22 (1.08%) NAS
15 20 (0.99%) IPsec
16 19 (0.94%) HTTPS
16 19 (0.94%) Kerberos
17 17 (0.84%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (6.06%) SQL Server
2 112 (5.52%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.68%) Oracle Database
4 68 (3.35%) MySQL
5 64 (3.15%) Relational Database
6 57 (2.81%) MongoDB
7 53 (2.61%) Amazon RDS
8 38 (1.87%) Amazon Aurora
9 36 (1.77%) Elasticsearch
10 35 (1.72%) NoSQL
11 30 (1.48%) RDBMS
12 28 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
13 24 (1.18%) Big Data
13 24 (1.18%) DynamoDB
14 21 (1.03%) SAP HANA
15 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
16 18 (0.89%) Data Lake
17 17 (0.84%) Power BI
17 17 (0.84%) Sybase ASE
18 16 (0.79%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 227 (11.18%) Jenkins
2 217 (10.69%) Git
3 187 (9.21%) GitLab
4 144 (7.09%) JIRA
5 38 (1.87%) Maven
6 32 (1.58%) SonarQube
7 30 (1.48%) Bitbucket
8 26 (1.28%) Mockito
8 26 (1.28%) Sonatype Nexus
9 21 (1.03%) Artifactory
10 19 (0.94%) Eclipse
11 16 (0.79%) JUnit
11 16 (0.79%) Selenium
12 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.64%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 12 (0.59%) DbUnit
14 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
15 11 (0.54%) Gradle
15 11 (0.54%) jMock
General
1 420 (20.69%) Social Skills
2 297 (14.63%) Finance
3 224 (11.03%) Analytical Skills
4 188 (9.26%) Public Sector
5 145 (7.14%) Banking
6 77 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (1.72%) Front Office
8 34 (1.67%) Military
8 34 (1.67%) Telecoms
9 30 (1.48%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.28%) Legal
11 24 (1.18%) Aerospace
12 23 (1.13%) Retail
13 20 (0.99%) Law
13 20 (0.99%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
16 15 (0.74%) Financial Institution
17 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
18 9 (0.44%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 293 (14.43%) Senior
2 220 (10.84%) Linux Engineer
3 183 (9.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 182 (8.97%) Developer
5 174 (8.57%) DevOps Engineer
6 116 (5.71%) Software Engineer
7 103 (5.07%) Architect
8 89 (4.38%) Platform Engineer
9 81 (3.99%) Analyst
10 78 (3.84%) Lead
11 75 (3.69%) Cloud Engineer
12 73 (3.60%) Consultant
13 69 (3.40%) Support Engineer
14 67 (3.30%) Java Developer
15 63 (3.10%) AWS Engineer
16 60 (2.96%) Administrator
17 53 (2.61%) Site Reliability Engineer
18 51 (2.51%) DBA
18 51 (2.51%) Systems Engineer
19 50 (2.46%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (5.67%) Kafka
2 108 (5.32%) REST
3 70 (3.45%) Middleware
4 69 (3.40%) Elastic Stack
5 58 (2.86%) .NET
6 55 (2.71%) Spring
7 52 (2.56%) RESTful
8 45 (2.22%) Spring Boot
8 45 (2.22%) Web Services
9 40 (1.97%) LDAP
10 36 (1.77%) Node.js
11 35 (1.72%) JSON
12 33 (1.63%) YAML
13 30 (1.48%) XML
14 29 (1.43%) SOAP
15 28 (1.38%) ActiveMQ
16 22 (1.08%) ARM Templates
16 22 (1.08%) Keycloak
16 22 (1.08%) RabbitMQ
17 21 (1.03%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 134 (6.60%) Cloud Native
2 127 (6.26%) Data Centre
3 123 (6.06%) Onboarding
4 104 (5.12%) Linux Command Line
5 97 (4.78%) PKI
6 88 (4.33%) Distributed Systems
7 83 (4.09%) Replication
8 73 (3.60%) Hybrid Cloud
9 64 (3.15%) Public Cloud
10 57 (2.81%) Management Information System
10 57 (2.81%) Security Posture
11 47 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
12 37 (1.82%) Embedded Systems
13 36 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
14 34 (1.67%) Product Ownership
15 33 (1.63%) Clustering
16 31 (1.53%) Operational Technology
17 30 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
18 29 (1.43%) Private Cloud
19 27 (1.33%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 770 (37.93%) Windows
2 412 (20.30%) Unix
3 347 (17.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 224 (11.03%) Windows Server
5 109 (5.37%) Ubuntu
6 68 (3.35%) AIX
7 56 (2.76%) Solaris
8 44 (2.17%) CentOS
9 37 (1.82%) Embedded Linux
10 26 (1.28%) SUSE
11 25 (1.23%) VMS
11 25 (1.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
13 18 (0.89%) Rocky
13 18 (0.89%) Windows 10
14 16 (0.79%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.74%) Debian
16 14 (0.69%) Android
17 11 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 590 (29.06%) CI/CD
2 517 (25.47%) DevOps
3 389 (19.16%) Infrastructure as Code
4 363 (17.88%) Agile
5 301 (14.83%) Problem-Solving
6 271 (13.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 267 (13.15%) Containerisation
8 243 (11.97%) Migration
9 227 (11.18%) Continuous Improvement
10 209 (10.30%) Software Engineering
11 204 (10.05%) High Availability
11 204 (10.05%) Observability
12 195 (9.61%) Platform Engineering
13 184 (9.06%) Root Cause Analysis
14 178 (8.77%) Performance Tuning
15 174 (8.57%) ITIL
16 154 (7.59%) SIEM
16 154 (7.59%) Test Automation
17 149 (7.34%) Configuration Management
18 143 (7.04%) AI
Programming Languages
1 707 (34.83%) Python
2 389 (19.16%) Bash
3 385 (18.97%) PowerShell
4 361 (17.78%) SQL
5 244 (12.02%) Java
6 152 (7.49%) Shell Script
7 132 (6.50%) C++
8 89 (4.38%) JavaScript
9 79 (3.89%) C
10 71 (3.50%) C#
11 62 (3.05%) Perl
12 61 (3.00%) PL/SQL
13 48 (2.36%) Go
14 40 (1.97%) Bicep
15 21 (1.03%) Ada
15 21 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
16 19 (0.94%) Groovy
16 19 (0.94%) Rust
17 18 (0.89%) TypeScript
18 14 (0.69%) Scala
Qualifications
1 800 (39.41%) Security Cleared
2 597 (29.41%) SC Cleared
3 229 (11.28%) DV Cleared
4 173 (8.52%) Degree
5 71 (3.50%) AWS Certification
6 61 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 58 (2.86%) CISSP
8 56 (2.76%) Cisco Certification
9 52 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
10 50 (2.46%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.33%) RHCE
12 25 (1.23%) CCNP
12 25 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
13 23 (1.13%) CompTIA Security+
14 22 (1.08%) CCNA
15 18 (0.89%) CISM
15 18 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 15 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 14 (0.69%) ISTQB
18 13 (0.64%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.74%) NIST
2 69 (3.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 62 (3.05%) QA
4 32 (1.58%) SLA
5 25 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.13%) GDPR
6 23 (1.13%) NCSC
7 20 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
8 19 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.69%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.64%) HIPAA
10 13 (0.64%) ISO 20022
11 11 (0.54%) GRC
12 9 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.30%) ISO 15022
13 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
13 6 (0.30%) JSP 440
13 6 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 338 (16.65%) Docker
2 266 (13.10%) Active Directory
3 244 (12.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (4.33%) Hyper-V
5 84 (4.14%) vSphere
6 81 (3.99%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (3.20%) VMware NSX
8 61 (3.00%) VMware ESXi
9 42 (2.07%) NFS
10 40 (1.97%) Oracle RAC
11 36 (1.77%) Firmware
12 29 (1.43%) KVM
13 18 (0.89%) Postfix
14 14 (0.69%) Ceph
15 13 (0.64%) Virtual Servers
16 12 (0.59%) GPFS
17 10 (0.49%) Embedded Firmware
17 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 8 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 469 (23.10%) Terraform
2 443 (21.82%) Ansible
3 428 (21.08%) Kubernetes
4 168 (8.28%) Grafana
5 144 (7.09%) Prometheus
6 87 (4.29%) Puppet
7 65 (3.20%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.56%) Oracle RMAN
9 40 (1.97%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.92%) Data Guard
11 37 (1.82%) SCCM
12 31 (1.53%) Nagios
13 29 (1.43%) Packer
14 27 (1.33%) ZABBIX
15 26 (1.28%) Red Hat Satellite
16 25 (1.23%) Kibana
17 24 (1.18%) NetBackup
17 24 (1.18%) Podman
17 24 (1.18%) VxRail
18 22 (1.08%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 340 (16.75%) VMware
2 315 (15.52%) Microsoft
3 302 (14.88%) Oracle
4 230 (11.33%) Red Hat
5 151 (7.44%) Splunk
6 124 (6.11%) Cisco
7 111 (5.47%) ServiceNow
8 101 (4.98%) IBM
9 81 (3.99%) CyberArk
10 74 (3.65%) Google
11 50 (2.46%) SolarWinds
12 46 (2.27%) SAP
13 45 (2.22%) BeyondTrust
13 45 (2.22%) Palo Alto
14 39 (1.92%) F5
14 39 (1.92%) NetApp
15 38 (1.87%) HP
16 33 (1.63%) Citrix
17 31 (1.53%) Dynatrace
17 31 (1.53%) Sybase