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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 32 32
Rank change year-on-year -19 0 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,905 1,752 2,228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.15% 5.98% 5.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.25% 42.88% 37.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,201 1,125 1,472
10th Percentile £326 £375 £325
25th Percentile £401 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -5.98%
75th Percentile £613 £640 £639
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £537 £540
% change year-on-year -8.75% -0.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 52 98
10th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £24.00
25th Percentile £43.34 £55.00 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.38 £71.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -2.87% +8.33% -7.69%

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 4,733 4,086 5,895
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.32% 13.95% 13.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,087 2,722 3,961
10th Percentile £181 £200 £183
25th Percentile £306 £320 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £575 £599 £594
90th Percentile £660 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 174 404
10th Percentile £15.33 £16.54 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.13 £15.23
Median hourly rate £27.50 £24.66 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.52% +14.70% -28.33%
75th Percentile £66.13 £62.50 £52.37
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £67.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £24.18 £20.00
% change year-on-year +13.73% +20.90% -27.27%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 1,611 £518 -5.91% 657
UK excluding London -10 1,123 £490 -8.75% 591
London -40 558 £550 -7.56% 162
Work from Home -23 494 £500 -4.76% 255
South East -5 309 £500 -9.09% 194
North of England -10 293 £487 -11.45% 88
Midlands -6 169 £467 -8.85% 63
South West -19 152 £540 -7.69% 102
West Midlands -5 150 £467 -13.49% 30
Yorkshire -21 150 £465 -15.45% 34
North West -7 132 £503 -4.19% 32
East of England -8 95 £462 -0.11% 82
Scotland -17 89 £425 -9.09% 46
East Midlands -33 18 £525 +16.67% 33
Northern Ireland +8 15 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -19 13 £550 +4.76% 24
Wales -15 8 £404 -26.59% 24

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 97 (5.09%) Confluence
2 45 (2.36%) nginx
3 44 (2.31%) Apache
4 36 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
5 25 (1.31%) Apache Spark
6 21 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.89%) SAS
8 16 (0.84%) OpenStack
8 16 (0.84%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.68%) Tomcat
10 12 (0.63%) SharePoint
11 10 (0.52%) CICS
11 10 (0.52%) TPMS
12 9 (0.47%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.31%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.16%) CMS
15 3 (0.16%) IBM HTTP Server
15 3 (0.16%) IIS
Applications
1 40 (2.10%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.52%) MS Visio
4 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.26%) Weka
5 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 3 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.052%) Odoo
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 563 (29.55%) AWS
2 380 (19.95%) Azure
3 168 (8.82%) GitHub
4 128 (6.72%) OpenShift
5 111 (5.83%) GCP
6 99 (5.20%) Amazon EC2
7 95 (4.99%) AWS CloudFormation
8 87 (4.57%) Amazon S3
9 85 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
10 82 (4.30%) Serverless
11 75 (3.94%) Amazon EKS
12 68 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
13 67 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
14 59 (3.10%) Amazon ECS
15 53 (2.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 48 (2.52%) IaaS
17 40 (2.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 39 (2.05%) Entra ID
18 39 (2.05%) Microsoft 365
19 35 (1.84%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 214 (11.23%) Firewall
2 135 (7.09%) DNS
3 107 (5.62%) TCP/IP
4 72 (3.78%) VPN
5 70 (3.67%) Network Security
6 53 (2.78%) SAN
7 45 (2.36%) SSH
8 42 (2.20%) DHCP
9 41 (2.15%) VSAN
10 39 (2.05%) WAN
11 37 (1.94%) HTTP
12 34 (1.78%) LAN
13 31 (1.63%) SNMP
14 30 (1.57%) SSL
15 24 (1.26%) Ethernet
16 23 (1.21%) BGP
17 22 (1.15%) Wireless
18 20 (1.05%) NAS
19 19 (1.00%) VLAN
20 18 (0.94%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (7.03%) PostgreSQL
2 106 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 71 (3.73%) Amazon RDS
4 70 (3.67%) MySQL
5 68 (3.57%) MongoDB
6 64 (3.36%) Relational Database
7 58 (3.04%) Oracle Database
8 40 (2.10%) Elasticsearch
8 40 (2.10%) NoSQL
9 26 (1.36%) Amazon Aurora
9 26 (1.36%) Big Data
10 22 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
11 21 (1.10%) DynamoDB
12 19 (1.00%) KDB
13 18 (0.94%) Kdb+
14 16 (0.84%) Hadoop
14 16 (0.84%) SAP HANA
15 14 (0.73%) Data Lake
15 14 (0.73%) DB2
16 12 (0.63%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 222 (11.65%) Jenkins
2 191 (10.03%) Git
3 175 (9.19%) GitLab
4 155 (8.14%) JIRA
5 34 (1.78%) Bitbucket
6 32 (1.68%) Maven
7 31 (1.63%) JUnit
7 31 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
8 26 (1.36%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.31%) Mockito
10 22 (1.15%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.94%) Cucumber
12 17 (0.89%) Artifactory
13 16 (0.84%) Visual Studio
14 12 (0.63%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.58%) Jaeger
15 11 (0.58%) JMeter
15 11 (0.58%) jMock
15 11 (0.58%) Selenium
16 10 (0.52%) DbUnit
General
1 421 (22.10%) Social Skills
2 285 (14.96%) Finance
3 195 (10.24%) Public Sector
4 164 (8.61%) Analytical Skills
5 114 (5.98%) Banking
6 70 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.52%) Military
8 31 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.36%) Financial Institution
10 24 (1.26%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
11 21 (1.10%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.05%) Aerospace
13 19 (1.00%) Front Office
13 19 (1.00%) Legal
13 19 (1.00%) Retail
14 17 (0.89%) Law
14 17 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 11 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 231 (12.13%) Senior
2 227 (11.92%) Developer
3 163 (8.56%) DevOps Engineer
4 133 (6.98%) Software Engineer
5 127 (6.67%) Linux Engineer
6 123 (6.46%) Analyst
7 122 (6.40%) Architect
8 96 (5.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 87 (4.57%) Java Developer
9 87 (4.57%) Lead
10 81 (4.25%) Administrator
11 74 (3.88%) Platform Engineer
12 69 (3.62%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 64 (3.36%) Site Engineer
14 63 (3.31%) AWS Engineer
15 53 (2.78%) Consultant
16 51 (2.68%) AWS DevOps
17 49 (2.57%) Security Engineer
18 42 (2.20%) Senior Developer
18 42 (2.20%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (5.93%) Kafka
2 91 (4.78%) REST
3 77 (4.04%) Elastic Stack
4 67 (3.52%) Node.js
5 65 (3.41%) Middleware
6 52 (2.73%) LDAP
6 52 (2.73%) Spring
7 47 (2.47%) Spring Boot
8 40 (2.10%) Web Services
9 35 (1.84%) RESTful
9 35 (1.84%) XML
10 33 (1.73%) YAML
11 32 (1.68%) JSON
12 31 (1.63%) .NET
13 27 (1.42%) AngularJS
13 27 (1.42%) React
13 27 (1.42%) SOAP
14 23 (1.21%) ActiveMQ
14 23 (1.21%) CSS
15 21 (1.10%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 123 (6.46%) Data Centre
2 104 (5.46%) Cloud Native
3 80 (4.20%) Linux Command Line
4 66 (3.46%) Management Information System
5 60 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
6 55 (2.89%) Onboarding
7 54 (2.83%) PKI
8 53 (2.78%) Replication
9 51 (2.68%) Public Cloud
10 47 (2.47%) Hybrid Cloud
11 46 (2.41%) Product Ownership
12 36 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
13 32 (1.68%) Security Operations Centre
14 31 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
15 30 (1.57%) Security Posture
16 27 (1.42%) Enterprise Storage
17 26 (1.36%) Equities
18 25 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
19 24 (1.26%) Clustering
19 24 (1.26%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 724 (38.01%) Windows
2 354 (18.58%) Unix
3 277 (14.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 176 (9.24%) Windows Server
5 86 (4.51%) Ubuntu
6 47 (2.47%) AIX
7 42 (2.20%) CentOS
8 37 (1.94%) Solaris
9 34 (1.78%) Android
9 34 (1.78%) VMS
10 30 (1.57%) Embedded Linux
11 23 (1.21%) Windows Server 2016
12 22 (1.15%) Mac OS
13 18 (0.94%) Debian
13 18 (0.94%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.68%) Mac OS X
14 13 (0.68%) SUSE
15 11 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
16 10 (0.52%) Apple iOS
17 9 (0.47%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 548 (28.77%) CI/CD
2 455 (23.88%) DevOps
3 402 (21.10%) Agile
4 335 (17.59%) Problem-Solving
5 289 (15.17%) Infrastructure as Code
6 277 (14.54%) Containerisation
7 211 (11.08%) Software Engineering
8 182 (9.55%) Observability
9 160 (8.40%) Migration
10 156 (8.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 145 (7.61%) Continuous Improvement
12 142 (7.45%) Cybersecurity
12 142 (7.45%) Microservices
13 141 (7.40%) Computer Science
14 139 (7.30%) Platform Engineering
15 138 (7.24%) Incident Response
16 135 (7.09%) SIEM
17 134 (7.03%) Test Automation
18 133 (6.98%) High Availability
19 124 (6.51%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 657 (34.49%) Python
2 317 (16.64%) SQL
3 291 (15.28%) Java
4 288 (15.12%) Bash
5 274 (14.38%) PowerShell
6 168 (8.82%) Shell Script
7 134 (7.03%) C++
8 108 (5.67%) JavaScript
9 86 (4.51%) Perl
10 65 (3.41%) C#
11 51 (2.68%) C
12 41 (2.15%) Ruby
13 40 (2.10%) Go
13 40 (2.10%) PL/SQL
14 31 (1.63%) TypeScript
15 25 (1.31%) PHP
16 23 (1.21%) Rust
17 20 (1.05%) MATLAB
18 18 (0.94%) Ada
18 18 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 753 (39.53%) Security Cleared
2 558 (29.29%) SC Cleared
3 196 (10.29%) DV Cleared
4 183 (9.61%) Degree
5 95 (4.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 77 (4.04%) Computer Science Degree
7 51 (2.68%) AWS Certification
8 47 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 42 (2.20%) CompTIA Security+
10 41 (2.15%) CISSP
11 30 (1.57%) RHCE
12 29 (1.52%) CCNA
13 26 (1.36%) CCNP
14 23 (1.21%) Azure Certification
15 21 (1.10%) Oracle Certification
16 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
17 18 (0.94%) CompTIA CySA+
17 18 (0.94%) OCP
18 16 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
19 14 (0.73%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (4.20%) NIST
2 68 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 50 (2.62%) QA
4 39 (2.05%) GDPR
5 37 (1.94%) SLA
6 23 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.05%) NCSC
7 20 (1.05%) PCI DSS
8 13 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (0.63%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.52%) GLBA
11 9 (0.47%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
14 6 (0.31%) GRC
15 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 5 (0.26%) DICOM
15 5 (0.26%) SOC 2
16 4 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 369 (19.37%) Docker
2 242 (12.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 177 (9.29%) Active Directory
4 92 (4.83%) vSphere
5 71 (3.73%) Virtual Machines
6 67 (3.52%) Hyper-V
7 63 (3.31%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (2.26%) VMware NSX
9 39 (2.05%) NFS
10 34 (1.78%) Firmware
11 28 (1.47%) GPFS
12 23 (1.21%) KVM
13 18 (0.94%) Postfix
14 17 (0.89%) Oracle RAC
15 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.58%) Ceph
16 11 (0.58%) Lustre
17 7 (0.37%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 439 (23.04%) Kubernetes
2 395 (20.73%) Terraform
3 374 (19.63%) Ansible
4 184 (9.66%) Grafana
5 145 (7.61%) Prometheus
6 66 (3.46%) Puppet
7 54 (2.83%) Progress Chef
8 49 (2.57%) vCenter Server
9 39 (2.05%) vRealize
10 35 (1.84%) Packer
11 32 (1.68%) Argo
12 30 (1.57%) Kibana
12 30 (1.57%) Red Hat Satellite
13 28 (1.47%) Podman
14 25 (1.31%) Oracle RMAN
15 22 (1.15%) VxRail
16 19 (1.00%) Nessus
16 19 (1.00%) SCCM
17 18 (0.94%) Consul
18 17 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 326 (17.11%) VMware
2 277 (14.54%) Microsoft
3 254 (13.33%) Oracle
4 233 (12.23%) Red Hat
5 184 (9.66%) Splunk
6 117 (6.14%) Cisco
7 97 (5.09%) IBM
8 69 (3.62%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.78%) Dell
10 45 (2.36%) CyberArk
11 44 (2.31%) Palo Alto
12 42 (2.20%) Google
13 38 (1.99%) HP
14 36 (1.89%) SolarWinds
15 30 (1.57%) Atlassian
15 30 (1.57%) Citrix
16 28 (1.47%) NetApp
17 25 (1.31%) BeyondTrust
17 25 (1.31%) F5
17 25 (1.31%) NVIDIA