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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 36 29
Rank change year-on-year -23 -7 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,107 1,886 2,091
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 5.67% 5.56%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.37% 41.13% 39.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,321 1,140 1,236
10th Percentile £356 £334 £350
25th Percentile £438 £418 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £716 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £518 £490 £525
% change year-on-year +5.61% -6.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 73 113
10th Percentile £41.71 £33.25 £49.25
25th Percentile £55.22 £53.00 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +3.85%

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 5,352 4,585 5,292
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.68% 13.78% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,380 2,923 3,267
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £420 £449
% change year-on-year +7.14% -6.46% -0.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 321 244
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.27
25th Percentile £17.22 £18.87 £22.95
Median hourly rate £25.75 £25.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -53.70% +18.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.10 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £23.50 £56.75
% change year-on-year +9.66% -58.59% +33.52%

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 16 October 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 16 October 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 16 October 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 1,776 £525 +1.01% 2,165
UK excluding London -26 1,164 £518 +5.61% 1,277
London -34 739 £535 -5.35% 917
Work from Home -29 561 £513 -1.25% 945
South East -17 326 £537 +13.05% 346
North of England -30 272 £500 +5.26% 201
South West -2 172 £575 +4.55% 221
Scotland -18 134 £468 -6.50% 85
North West -24 134 £488 +21.27% 106
Midlands -52 125 £476 -4.80% 134
Yorkshire -35 114 £521 +4.25% 65
East of England -12 110 £483 -1.78% 224
West Midlands -51 106 £475 -7.05% 79
Wales +15 32 £465 +3.33% 25
North East -13 32 £480 -10.70% 31
East Midlands +2 17 £481 +14.52% 55
Northern Ireland -3 3 - - 60

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 70 (3.32%) Confluence
2 48 (2.28%) Apache
3 41 (1.95%) nginx
4 29 (1.38%) WebLogic
5 22 (1.04%) SharePoint
6 21 (1.00%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.00%) OpenStack
7 19 (0.90%) IIS
7 19 (0.90%) Microsoft Exchange
7 19 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 19 (0.90%) Tomcat
8 16 (0.76%) Apache Spark
9 15 (0.71%) SAS
10 13 (0.62%) JBoss
11 10 (0.47%) WebSphere
12 7 (0.33%) CMS
13 6 (0.28%) MTS
13 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
14 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
14 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 29 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
5 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.047%) Simulink
6 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 621 (29.47%) AWS
2 541 (25.68%) Azure
3 217 (10.30%) GCP
4 170 (8.07%) GitHub
5 116 (5.51%) Entra ID
5 116 (5.51%) OpenShift
6 107 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
7 97 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
8 89 (4.22%) Amazon S3
9 79 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
10 72 (3.42%) AWS CloudFormation
11 71 (3.37%) Serverless
12 63 (2.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 62 (2.94%) Amazon EKS
14 61 (2.90%) Microsoft 365
15 58 (2.75%) AWS Lambda
16 53 (2.52%) IaaS
16 53 (2.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 46 (2.18%) Datadog
18 43 (2.04%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 227 (10.77%) DNS
2 218 (10.35%) Firewall
3 173 (8.21%) TCP/IP
4 134 (6.36%) DHCP
5 92 (4.37%) Network Security
6 91 (4.32%) VPN
7 76 (3.61%) SAN
8 56 (2.66%) SSL
9 48 (2.28%) SSH
10 43 (2.04%) HTTP
11 42 (1.99%) WAN
12 41 (1.95%) VLAN
13 31 (1.47%) BGP
14 29 (1.38%) Kerberos
14 29 (1.38%) LAN
15 27 (1.28%) VSAN
15 27 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
16 25 (1.19%) Wireless
17 21 (1.00%) 5G
17 21 (1.00%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (5.74%) PostgreSQL
2 111 (5.27%) SQL Server
3 105 (4.98%) Oracle Database
4 79 (3.75%) Relational Database
5 63 (2.99%) MySQL
6 57 (2.71%) Amazon RDS
7 47 (2.23%) MongoDB
8 45 (2.14%) NoSQL
9 38 (1.80%) Data Warehouse
10 34 (1.61%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 25 (1.19%) Data Lake
13 20 (0.95%) Power BI
14 19 (0.90%) Amazon Aurora
14 19 (0.90%) Big Data
14 19 (0.90%) Redis
15 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 12c
16 16 (0.76%) DynamoDB
16 16 (0.76%) Oracle Database 11g
16 16 (0.76%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 306 (14.52%) Git
2 269 (12.77%) Jenkins
3 241 (11.44%) GitLab
4 169 (8.02%) JIRA
5 44 (2.09%) Maven
6 37 (1.76%) Bitbucket
7 33 (1.57%) SonarQube
8 29 (1.38%) Artifactory
8 29 (1.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.14%) Selenium
10 21 (1.00%) Gradle
10 21 (1.00%) Mockito
11 20 (0.95%) Cucumber
11 20 (0.95%) JUnit
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 14 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 11 (0.52%) JMeter
14 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
15 10 (0.47%) LoadRunner
General
1 479 (22.73%) Social Skills
2 355 (16.85%) Finance
3 242 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
4 181 (8.59%) Banking
5 157 (7.45%) Public Sector
6 77 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (2.66%) Telecoms
8 50 (2.37%) Investment Banking
9 37 (1.76%) Front Office
10 35 (1.66%) Military
11 28 (1.33%) Legal
12 25 (1.19%) Aerospace
13 24 (1.14%) Law
14 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (0.81%) Retail
17 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
18 13 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
19 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
20 10 (0.47%) Police
Job Titles
1 329 (15.61%) Senior
2 230 (10.92%) Linux Engineer
3 222 (10.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 212 (10.06%) Developer
5 194 (9.21%) DevOps Engineer
6 106 (5.03%) Platform Engineer
7 105 (4.98%) Architect
8 92 (4.37%) Software Engineer
9 83 (3.94%) Support Engineer
10 82 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
11 75 (3.56%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 73 (3.46%) Analyst
12 73 (3.46%) Java Developer
13 72 (3.42%) Consultant
14 67 (3.18%) Administrator
14 67 (3.18%) AWS Engineer
15 64 (3.04%) Lead
16 55 (2.61%) Network Engineer
17 52 (2.47%) DBA
18 51 (2.42%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 539 (25.58%) Terraform
2 146 (6.93%) REST
3 145 (6.88%) Kafka
4 82 (3.89%) Middleware
5 72 (3.42%) Elastic Stack
6 70 (3.32%) .NET
7 56 (2.66%) Spring
7 56 (2.66%) Web Services
8 54 (2.56%) LDAP
8 54 (2.56%) RESTful
9 50 (2.37%) Spring Boot
10 46 (2.18%) React
11 45 (2.14%) JSON
12 40 (1.90%) XML
13 36 (1.71%) Flask
13 36 (1.71%) SOAP
14 34 (1.61%) Django
15 33 (1.57%) Keycloak
16 32 (1.52%) ARM Templates
16 32 (1.52%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 169 (8.02%) Onboarding
2 150 (7.12%) Cloud Native
3 124 (5.89%) Data Centre
4 116 (5.51%) PKI
5 107 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.46%) Replication
7 93 (4.41%) Distributed Systems
8 74 (3.51%) Hybrid Cloud
9 69 (3.27%) Management Information System
10 64 (3.04%) Public Cloud
11 61 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
12 55 (2.61%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
13 41 (1.95%) Operational Technology
13 41 (1.95%) Private Cloud
14 39 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
14 39 (1.85%) Enterprise Storage
15 38 (1.80%) Product Ownership
16 35 (1.66%) Fixed Income
16 35 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 797 (37.83%) Windows
2 417 (19.79%) Unix
3 367 (17.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 246 (11.68%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.27%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.04%) CentOS
7 51 (2.42%) Solaris
8 50 (2.37%) AIX
9 32 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
11 29 (1.38%) VMS
12 25 (1.19%) macOS
12 25 (1.19%) SUSE
13 24 (1.14%) Rocky
14 15 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
15 13 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
15 13 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
17 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
17 11 (0.52%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 686 (32.56%) CI/CD
2 592 (28.10%) DevOps
3 480 (22.78%) Infrastructure as Code
4 401 (19.03%) Agile
5 343 (16.28%) Problem-Solving
6 340 (16.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 320 (15.19%) Containerisation
8 284 (13.48%) Continuous Improvement
9 270 (12.81%) Observability
10 257 (12.20%) Platform Engineering
11 236 (11.20%) Migration
12 225 (10.68%) Software Engineering
13 223 (10.58%) Root Cause Analysis
14 196 (9.30%) Configuration Management
15 194 (9.21%) High Availability
16 188 (8.92%) Stakeholder Management
17 187 (8.88%) ITIL
18 185 (8.78%) Test Automation
19 184 (8.73%) Cybersecurity
20 167 (7.93%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 791 (37.54%) Python
2 482 (22.88%) Bash
3 419 (19.89%) PowerShell
4 384 (18.22%) SQL
5 262 (12.43%) Java
6 162 (7.69%) Shell Script
7 123 (5.84%) C++
8 85 (4.03%) JavaScript
9 84 (3.99%) Perl
10 79 (3.75%) C#
11 67 (3.18%) C
12 61 (2.90%) Go
12 61 (2.90%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.33%) Bicep
14 42 (1.99%) Groovy
15 29 (1.38%) TypeScript
16 18 (0.85%) Search Processing Language
17 16 (0.76%) Korn
17 16 (0.76%) Rust
18 13 (0.62%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 795 (37.73%) Security Cleared
2 549 (26.06%) SC Cleared
3 257 (12.20%) DV Cleared
4 181 (8.59%) Degree
5 79 (3.75%) AWS Certification
6 62 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
7 60 (2.85%) CISSP
8 57 (2.71%) Azure Certification
9 55 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
10 50 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
11 30 (1.42%) CISM
12 24 (1.14%) CCNP
13 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
14 20 (0.95%) CCNA
15 19 (0.90%) ISTQB
15 19 (0.90%) RHCE
16 17 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 15 (0.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 13 (0.62%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (3.65%) QA
2 69 (3.27%) NIST
3 60 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 26 (1.23%) Data Quality
5 25 (1.19%) SLA
6 23 (1.09%) GDPR
7 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
8 16 (0.76%) GRC
8 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.71%) Disclosure Scotland
10 14 (0.66%) NCSC
11 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
13 8 (0.38%) SOC 2
14 7 (0.33%) HIPAA
14 7 (0.33%) MISRA
15 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
15 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
15 5 (0.24%) MISRA C
System Software
1 406 (19.27%) Docker
2 292 (13.86%) Active Directory
3 230 (10.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (3.80%) Hyper-V
5 78 (3.70%) vSphere
6 69 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (2.99%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (2.04%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.80%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (1.76%) Firmware
11 34 (1.61%) NFS
12 28 (1.33%) KVM
13 26 (1.23%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.66%) Ceph
15 13 (0.62%) Embedded Firmware
16 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 11 (0.52%) GPFS
18 10 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
19 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 9 (0.43%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 509 (24.16%) Kubernetes
2 478 (22.69%) Ansible
3 195 (9.25%) Grafana
4 177 (8.40%) Prometheus
5 91 (4.32%) Puppet
6 61 (2.90%) Progress Chef
7 56 (2.66%) SCCM
8 48 (2.28%) Oracle RMAN
9 44 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
10 39 (1.85%) Data Guard
11 32 (1.52%) Kibana
12 29 (1.38%) vCenter Server
13 28 (1.33%) Nagios
14 26 (1.23%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.23%) VxRail
15 25 (1.19%) Podman
15 25 (1.19%) Red Hat Satellite
16 23 (1.09%) Argo
16 23 (1.09%) Packer
17 21 (1.00%) Istio
Vendors
1 360 (17.09%) Microsoft
2 324 (15.38%) VMware
3 284 (13.48%) Oracle
4 217 (10.30%) Red Hat
5 173 (8.21%) Splunk
6 125 (5.93%) ServiceNow
7 114 (5.41%) Cisco
8 106 (5.03%) Google
9 92 (4.37%) IBM
10 75 (3.56%) CyberArk
11 52 (2.47%) NetApp
12 45 (2.14%) SolarWinds
13 38 (1.80%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.80%) F5
14 36 (1.71%) Dell
14 36 (1.71%) Palo Alto
15 33 (1.57%) BeyondTrust
15 33 (1.57%) SAP
16 29 (1.38%) CrowdStrike
16 29 (1.38%) Tenable