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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 32 32
Rank change year-on-year -21 0 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,946 1,762 2,296
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.78% 5.69% 5.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.49% 41.55% 38.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,211 1,130 1,487
10th Percentile £345 £373 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 46 142
10th Percentile £34.92 £46.16 £48.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £54.44 £57.50
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.23 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 4,928 4,241 5,905
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.58% 13.70% 13.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,148 2,752 3,889
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% -2.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +0.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 218 434
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.22 £22.25 £24.93
Median % change year-on-year +17.84% -10.74% -41.35%
75th Percentile £63.75 £43.35 £64.69
90th Percentile £70.00 £66.15 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £18.87 £31.25
% change year-on-year +37.78% -39.62% -6.72%

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 -25 1,640 £513 -5.09% 941
UK excluding London -18 1,152 £500 - 740
London -51 575 £525 -8.70% 271
Work from Home -34 516 £500 -1.23% 361
South East -5 314 £518 -1.43% 230
North of England -14 308 £482 -5.57% 136
South West -5 168 £538 -6.52% 148
Yorkshire -20 149 £500 -4.76% 32
Midlands -5 148 £475 -4.52% 70
North West -26 142 £472 +17.41% 85
West Midlands -10 125 £471 -5.85% 34
Scotland -28 94 £463 -3.04% 32
East of England -13 93 £475 -2.31% 111
Wales +4 27 £465 +64.60% 10
North East -16 21 £406 -14.92% 19
East Midlands -14 20 £528 +16.06% 36
Northern Ireland -2 7 £425 +21.43% 16

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 (4.16%) Confluence
2 48 (2.47%) Apache
3 30 (1.54%) nginx
4 29 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
5 24 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.08%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.92%) Apache Spark
8 16 (0.82%) WebLogic
9 11 (0.57%) CICS
9 11 (0.57%) OpenStack
10 10 (0.51%) SAS
11 9 (0.46%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.46%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.41%) IIS
13 6 (0.31%) JBoss
13 6 (0.31%) SharePoint
13 6 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.26%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.26%) CMS
15 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 19 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.10%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.051%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.051%) Houdini
6 1 (0.051%) InDesign
6 1 (0.051%) NUKE
6 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.051%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.051%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
4 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.051%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.051%) Odoo
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.051%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.051%) Shopify
5 1 (0.051%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.051%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 570 (29.29%) AWS
2 405 (20.81%) Azure
3 154 (7.91%) GitHub
4 132 (6.78%) GCP
5 108 (5.55%) OpenShift
6 90 (4.62%) GitHub Actions
7 89 (4.57%) Amazon S3
8 87 (4.47%) Amazon EC2
9 70 (3.60%) Entra ID
10 64 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
11 62 (3.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 61 (3.13%) Amazon EKS
13 55 (2.83%) Serverless
14 52 (2.67%) AWS CloudFormation
15 48 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
16 47 (2.42%) IaaS
16 47 (2.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 46 (2.36%) Microsoft 365
18 43 (2.21%) SaaS
19 42 (2.16%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 178 (9.15%) Firewall
2 144 (7.40%) DNS
3 80 (4.11%) TCP/IP
4 75 (3.85%) Network Security
4 75 (3.85%) VPN
5 72 (3.70%) SAN
6 55 (2.83%) DHCP
7 49 (2.52%) WAN
8 38 (1.95%) SSL
9 36 (1.85%) LAN
10 34 (1.75%) SNMP
11 31 (1.59%) HTTP
11 31 (1.59%) SSH
11 31 (1.59%) VSAN
12 27 (1.39%) NAS
13 24 (1.23%) Ethernet
13 24 (1.23%) VLAN
14 20 (1.03%) IPsec
15 17 (0.87%) Intrusion Detection
15 17 (0.87%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (5.91%) SQL Server
2 111 (5.70%) PostgreSQL
3 78 (4.01%) Oracle Database
4 75 (3.85%) MySQL
5 67 (3.44%) Relational Database
6 65 (3.34%) MongoDB
7 55 (2.83%) Amazon RDS
8 41 (2.11%) Elasticsearch
9 38 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.49%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.49%) NoSQL
11 22 (1.13%) RDBMS
12 21 (1.08%) Big Data
13 20 (1.03%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.98%) KDB
15 17 (0.87%) Sybase ASE
16 15 (0.77%) Db2
16 15 (0.77%) Kdb+
17 14 (0.72%) Oracle Database 12c
18 13 (0.67%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 213 (10.95%) Jenkins
2 191 (9.82%) GitLab
3 163 (8.38%) Git
4 145 (7.45%) JIRA
5 32 (1.64%) Maven
6 31 (1.59%) Mockito
6 31 (1.59%) SonarQube
7 21 (1.08%) Bitbucket
7 21 (1.08%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.92%) Artifactory
9 17 (0.87%) JUnit
9 17 (0.87%) Sonatype Nexus
10 15 (0.77%) Visual Studio
11 14 (0.72%) DbUnit
11 14 (0.72%) Rational Rhapsody
12 13 (0.67%) jMock
13 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket Server
14 9 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 9 (0.46%) Jaeger
General
1 391 (20.09%) Social Skills
2 275 (14.13%) Finance
3 199 (10.23%) Public Sector
4 169 (8.68%) Analytical Skills
5 134 (6.89%) Banking
6 79 (4.06%) Documentation Skills
7 39 (2.00%) Military
8 29 (1.49%) Front Office
9 27 (1.39%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.39%) Retail
10 25 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 22 (1.13%) Legal
12 21 (1.08%) Law
13 20 (1.03%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.92%) Aerospace
15 18 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
16 17 (0.87%) Manufacturing
17 11 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 249 (12.80%) Senior
2 200 (10.28%) Developer
3 191 (9.82%) Linux Engineer
4 187 (9.61%) DevOps Engineer
5 148 (7.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 121 (6.22%) Software Engineer
7 99 (5.09%) Analyst
8 96 (4.93%) Architect
9 84 (4.32%) Lead
10 75 (3.85%) Java Developer
11 66 (3.39%) AWS Engineer
11 66 (3.39%) Consultant
12 64 (3.29%) Platform Engineer
13 60 (3.08%) Administrator
13 60 (3.08%) Support Engineer
14 57 (2.93%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 54 (2.77%) Cloud Engineer
16 52 (2.67%) Security Engineer
17 49 (2.52%) Senior Developer
17 49 (2.52%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (4.93%) Kafka
2 89 (4.57%) REST
3 80 (4.11%) Middleware
4 70 (3.60%) Elastic Stack
5 51 (2.62%) LDAP
5 51 (2.62%) Spring
6 48 (2.47%) Spring Boot
7 45 (2.31%) Web Services
8 44 (2.26%) RESTful
9 43 (2.21%) Node.js
10 40 (2.06%) .NET
11 31 (1.59%) ActiveMQ
12 28 (1.44%) YAML
13 26 (1.34%) JSON
13 26 (1.34%) React
13 26 (1.34%) SOAP
14 25 (1.28%) AngularJS
15 21 (1.08%) Django
15 21 (1.08%) XML
16 20 (1.03%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 142 (7.30%) Data Centre
2 121 (6.22%) Cloud Native
3 96 (4.93%) Onboarding
4 86 (4.42%) Linux Command Line
5 76 (3.91%) PKI
6 73 (3.75%) Distributed Systems
7 66 (3.39%) Replication
8 65 (3.34%) Management Information System
9 54 (2.77%) Security Posture
10 53 (2.72%) Public Cloud
11 50 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
11 50 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
12 37 (1.90%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
14 28 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
14 28 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
14 28 (1.44%) Enterprise Storage
15 27 (1.39%) Clustering
16 24 (1.23%) Operational Technology
17 23 (1.18%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 742 (38.13%) Windows
2 399 (20.50%) Unix
3 310 (15.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 191 (9.82%) Windows Server
5 104 (5.34%) Ubuntu
6 64 (3.29%) AIX
7 52 (2.67%) Solaris
8 39 (2.00%) CentOS
9 29 (1.49%) VMS
10 27 (1.39%) Embedded Linux
11 24 (1.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (1.18%) SUSE
13 19 (0.98%) Android
14 17 (0.87%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.82%) Debian
15 16 (0.82%) Mac OS
16 15 (0.77%) Mac OS X
17 14 (0.72%) Oracle Linux
18 13 (0.67%) Windows 10
19 12 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 544 (27.95%) CI/CD
2 475 (24.41%) DevOps
3 354 (18.19%) Agile
4 311 (15.98%) Infrastructure as Code
5 292 (15.01%) Problem-Solving
6 257 (13.21%) Containerisation
7 212 (10.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 210 (10.79%) Migration
9 200 (10.28%) Software Engineering
10 177 (9.10%) High Availability
11 173 (8.89%) Continuous Improvement
12 172 (8.84%) Observability
13 157 (8.07%) Performance Tuning
14 149 (7.66%) ITIL
15 148 (7.61%) Root Cause Analysis
16 145 (7.45%) SIEM
17 139 (7.14%) Platform Engineering
18 131 (6.73%) Configuration Management
18 131 (6.73%) Test Automation
19 130 (6.68%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 654 (33.61%) Python
2 318 (16.34%) SQL
3 310 (15.93%) Bash
4 295 (15.16%) PowerShell
5 242 (12.44%) Java
6 144 (7.40%) Shell Script
7 116 (5.96%) C++
8 87 (4.47%) JavaScript
9 62 (3.19%) C
10 59 (3.03%) C#
11 57 (2.93%) Perl
12 49 (2.52%) Go
12 49 (2.52%) PL/SQL
13 22 (1.13%) Ada
14 21 (1.08%) Rust
15 20 (1.03%) TypeScript
16 19 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
17 17 (0.87%) Bicep
17 17 (0.87%) MATLAB
18 16 (0.82%) PHP
Qualifications
1 751 (38.59%) Security Cleared
2 559 (28.73%) SC Cleared
3 209 (10.74%) DV Cleared
4 178 (9.15%) Degree
5 69 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (3.44%) AWS Certification
7 58 (2.98%) CISSP
8 56 (2.88%) Cisco Certification
9 53 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
10 41 (2.11%) Azure Certification
11 35 (1.80%) CompTIA Security+
12 31 (1.59%) RHCE
13 26 (1.34%) CCNA
14 24 (1.23%) CCNP
15 20 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
16 19 (0.98%) CISM
17 16 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.82%) GIAC
18 14 (0.72%) Oracle Certification
19 13 (0.67%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.57%) NIST
2 84 (4.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.93%) QA
4 41 (2.11%) SLA
5 23 (1.18%) GDPR
5 23 (1.18%) NCSC
6 22 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
7 18 (0.92%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.82%) Disclosure Scotland
9 12 (0.62%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.57%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.57%) GRC
11 10 (0.51%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.36%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.31%) ISO 20022
14 6 (0.31%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 4 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 328 (16.86%) Docker
2 228 (11.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 223 (11.46%) Active Directory
4 90 (4.62%) Virtual Machines
5 68 (3.49%) VMware ESXi
5 68 (3.49%) vSphere
6 67 (3.44%) Hyper-V
7 50 (2.57%) NFS
7 50 (2.57%) VMware NSX
8 35 (1.80%) Firmware
9 33 (1.70%) KVM
10 29 (1.49%) Oracle RAC
11 21 (1.08%) Postfix
12 18 (0.92%) GPFS
13 11 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.51%) Ceph
14 10 (0.51%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.41%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.36%) Squid
16 7 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 408 (20.97%) Ansible
2 391 (20.09%) Kubernetes
3 388 (19.94%) Terraform
4 165 (8.48%) Grafana
5 143 (7.35%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.70%) Puppet
7 53 (2.72%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.31%) vCenter Server
9 40 (2.06%) Oracle RMAN
10 29 (1.49%) Red Hat Satellite
11 28 (1.44%) Nagios
11 28 (1.44%) Packer
12 26 (1.34%) Data Guard
12 26 (1.34%) ZABBIX
13 23 (1.18%) Podman
13 23 (1.18%) vRealize
14 22 (1.13%) Tivoli
15 21 (1.08%) Argo
15 21 (1.08%) Kibana
16 19 (0.98%) SCCM
Vendors
1 304 (15.62%) VMware
2 275 (14.13%) Oracle
3 265 (13.62%) Microsoft
4 221 (11.36%) Red Hat
5 159 (8.17%) Splunk
6 126 (6.47%) Cisco
7 106 (5.45%) IBM
8 90 (4.62%) ServiceNow
9 65 (3.34%) CyberArk
10 63 (3.24%) Google
11 49 (2.52%) Palo Alto
12 45 (2.31%) SolarWinds
13 41 (2.11%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.06%) SAP
15 38 (1.95%) F5
16 35 (1.80%) Citrix
17 33 (1.70%) HP
18 31 (1.59%) Sybase
19 30 (1.54%) NetApp
20 29 (1.49%) Dynatrace