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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -21 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,997 1,826 2,318
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.65% 5.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.45% 41.61% 38.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,245 1,169 1,492
10th Percentile £350 £368 £340
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
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 £694 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 53 143
10th Percentile £35.70 £43.21 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £55.00 £58.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.50 £68.00 -
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 5,062 4,388 5,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.59% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,243 2,836 3,899
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £316 £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 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £460
% change year-on-year - -2.17% +0.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 237 441
10th Percentile £15.76 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.50 £23.00 £24.86
Median % change year-on-year +15.22% -7.46% -41.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £49.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.18 £66.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £20.75 £30.50
% change year-on-year +27.57% -31.97% +2.87%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 1,682 £513 -4.65% 720
UK excluding London -14 1,191 £500 - 608
London -52 585 £545 -5.63% 206
Work from Home -31 527 £500 -2.44% 305
South East -1 332 £513 -2.38% 189
North of England -18 309 £480 -4.00% 125
South West -6 180 £539 -6.30% 101
Midlands -11 152 £475 - 55
North West -14 148 £475 +18.16% 77
Yorkshire -22 144 £500 -4.76% 31
West Midlands -13 130 £474 -4.77% 27
Scotland -24 101 £475 -2.56% 27
East of England -19 91 £475 -2.31% 84
Wales +3 28 £465 +64.60% 12
North East -17 22 £406 -14.92% 18
East Midlands -10 19 £528 +16.06% 28
Northern Ireland +2 6 - - 28

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 84 (4.21%) Confluence
2 53 (2.65%) Apache
3 32 (1.60%) nginx
4 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 26 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.05%) Tomcat
7 20 (1.00%) WebLogic
8 18 (0.90%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.60%) OpenStack
10 11 (0.55%) CICS
10 11 (0.55%) SAS
11 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
12 8 (0.40%) IIS
12 8 (0.40%) JBoss
13 6 (0.30%) SharePoint
13 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.25%) CMS
15 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 22 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 12 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.050%) Houdini
5 1 (0.050%) InDesign
5 1 (0.050%) NUKE
5 1 (0.050%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) Shopify
5 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 593 (29.69%) AWS
2 423 (21.18%) Azure
3 157 (7.86%) GitHub
4 139 (6.96%) GCP
5 117 (5.86%) OpenShift
6 93 (4.66%) Amazon S3
7 92 (4.61%) GitHub Actions
8 88 (4.41%) Amazon EC2
9 74 (3.71%) Entra ID
10 68 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
11 64 (3.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 61 (3.05%) Amazon EKS
13 59 (2.95%) Serverless
14 53 (2.65%) AWS CloudFormation
15 49 (2.45%) AWS Lambda
16 48 (2.40%) Microsoft 365
16 48 (2.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 47 (2.35%) IaaS
18 43 (2.15%) SaaS
19 42 (2.10%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 186 (9.31%) Firewall
2 160 (8.01%) DNS
3 89 (4.46%) TCP/IP
4 76 (3.81%) VPN
5 74 (3.71%) Network Security
6 73 (3.66%) SAN
7 63 (3.15%) DHCP
8 48 (2.40%) WAN
9 37 (1.85%) SSL
10 36 (1.80%) LAN
11 35 (1.75%) VSAN
12 33 (1.65%) SNMP
13 31 (1.55%) HTTP
14 30 (1.50%) SSH
15 27 (1.35%) NAS
16 25 (1.25%) VLAN
17 24 (1.20%) Ethernet
18 21 (1.05%) IPsec
19 19 (0.95%) BGP
20 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
1 118 (5.91%) SQL Server
2 83 (4.16%) Oracle Database
3 77 (3.86%) MySQL
4 71 (3.56%) Relational Database
5 66 (3.30%) MongoDB
6 57 (2.85%) Amazon RDS
7 42 (2.10%) Elasticsearch
8 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
9 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
9 29 (1.45%) NoSQL
10 26 (1.30%) RDBMS
11 21 (1.05%) Big Data
12 20 (1.00%) SAP HANA
13 19 (0.95%) KDB
14 17 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
15 16 (0.80%) DataStage
15 16 (0.80%) Oracle Database 12c
16 15 (0.75%) Db2
16 15 (0.75%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 217 (10.87%) Jenkins
2 196 (9.81%) GitLab
3 169 (8.46%) Git
4 152 (7.61%) JIRA
5 34 (1.70%) Maven
6 31 (1.55%) Mockito
6 31 (1.55%) SonarQube
7 23 (1.15%) Bitbucket
8 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
9 19 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
10 18 (0.90%) Artifactory
11 17 (0.85%) JUnit
12 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.70%) Rational Rhapsody
14 13 (0.65%) jMock
15 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
16 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
17 8 (0.40%) TeamCity
General
1 402 (20.13%) Social Skills
2 280 (14.02%) Finance
3 206 (10.32%) Public Sector
4 171 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
5 137 (6.86%) Banking
6 76 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.90%) Military
8 29 (1.45%) Front Office
8 29 (1.45%) Investment Banking
9 26 (1.30%) Retail
9 26 (1.30%) Telecoms
10 24 (1.20%) Legal
11 22 (1.10%) Law
12 19 (0.95%) Aerospace
12 19 (0.95%) Financial Institution
12 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 17 (0.85%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
15 10 (0.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 257 (12.87%) Senior
2 210 (10.52%) Developer
3 194 (9.71%) DevOps Engineer
4 193 (9.66%) Linux Engineer
5 153 (7.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 124 (6.21%) Software Engineer
7 102 (5.11%) Architect
8 97 (4.86%) Analyst
9 84 (4.21%) Lead
10 77 (3.86%) Java Developer
11 69 (3.46%) Platform Engineer
12 67 (3.36%) Consultant
13 66 (3.30%) AWS Engineer
14 62 (3.10%) Support Engineer
15 60 (3.00%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 57 (2.85%) Cloud Engineer
17 55 (2.75%) Administrator
18 52 (2.60%) Security Engineer
18 52 (2.60%) Site Engineer
19 51 (2.55%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (4.81%) Kafka
2 92 (4.61%) REST
3 76 (3.81%) Elastic Stack
3 76 (3.81%) Middleware
4 54 (2.70%) Spring
5 50 (2.50%) LDAP
6 48 (2.40%) Spring Boot
7 47 (2.35%) Web Services
8 45 (2.25%) RESTful
9 43 (2.15%) Node.js
10 41 (2.05%) .NET
11 31 (1.55%) ActiveMQ
12 28 (1.40%) YAML
13 27 (1.35%) JSON
13 27 (1.35%) React
13 27 (1.35%) SOAP
14 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
15 24 (1.20%) XML
16 22 (1.10%) Django
17 20 (1.00%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 141 (7.06%) Data Centre
2 127 (6.36%) Cloud Native
3 100 (5.01%) Onboarding
4 92 (4.61%) Linux Command Line
5 80 (4.01%) PKI
6 76 (3.81%) Distributed Systems
7 68 (3.41%) Replication
8 61 (3.05%) Management Information System
9 57 (2.85%) Public Cloud
10 55 (2.75%) Security Posture
11 53 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
12 49 (2.45%) Hybrid Cloud
13 37 (1.85%) Product Ownership
14 30 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
15 28 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
15 28 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
16 27 (1.35%) Clustering
16 27 (1.35%) Enterprise Storage
16 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
17 24 (1.20%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 753 (37.71%) Windows
2 415 (20.78%) Unix
3 322 (16.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 194 (9.71%) Windows Server
5 103 (5.16%) Ubuntu
6 68 (3.41%) AIX
7 58 (2.90%) Solaris
8 41 (2.05%) CentOS
9 29 (1.45%) Embedded Linux
9 29 (1.45%) VMS
10 24 (1.20%) SUSE
10 24 (1.20%) Windows Server 2019
11 19 (0.95%) Android
12 16 (0.80%) Mac OS
12 16 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
13 15 (0.75%) Debian
13 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
13 15 (0.75%) Oracle Linux
13 15 (0.75%) Windows 10
14 13 (0.65%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 568 (28.44%) CI/CD
2 483 (24.19%) DevOps
3 364 (18.23%) Agile
4 333 (16.68%) Infrastructure as Code
5 301 (15.07%) Problem-Solving
6 274 (13.72%) Containerisation
7 219 (10.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 215 (10.77%) Migration
9 208 (10.42%) Software Engineering
10 184 (9.21%) Observability
11 180 (9.01%) Continuous Improvement
11 180 (9.01%) High Availability
12 164 (8.21%) Performance Tuning
13 159 (7.96%) Root Cause Analysis
14 156 (7.81%) ITIL
15 149 (7.46%) Platform Engineering
15 149 (7.46%) SIEM
16 133 (6.66%) Microservices
16 133 (6.66%) Test Automation
17 131 (6.56%) AI
Programming Languages
1 674 (33.75%) Python
2 334 (16.73%) SQL
3 324 (16.22%) Bash
4 310 (15.52%) PowerShell
5 249 (12.47%) Java
6 147 (7.36%) Shell Script
7 120 (6.01%) C++
8 90 (4.51%) JavaScript
9 68 (3.41%) C
10 61 (3.05%) C#
11 56 (2.80%) Perl
11 56 (2.80%) PL/SQL
12 51 (2.55%) Go
13 25 (1.25%) Ada
14 22 (1.10%) TypeScript
15 21 (1.05%) Rust
16 20 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.90%) Bicep
18 16 (0.80%) PHP
19 15 (0.75%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 783 (39.21%) Security Cleared
2 585 (29.29%) SC Cleared
3 221 (11.07%) DV Cleared
4 178 (8.91%) Degree
5 70 (3.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 69 (3.46%) AWS Certification
7 57 (2.85%) CISSP
8 56 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
9 54 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
10 43 (2.15%) Azure Certification
11 34 (1.70%) CompTIA Security+
12 30 (1.50%) RHCE
13 26 (1.30%) CCNA
14 24 (1.20%) CCNP
15 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
16 18 (0.90%) CISM
17 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.80%) GIAC
17 16 (0.80%) Oracle Certification
18 14 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (4.36%) NIST
2 83 (4.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (2.90%) QA
4 41 (2.05%) SLA
5 24 (1.20%) NCSC
6 21 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
6 21 (1.05%) GDPR
7 20 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.85%) PCI DSS
9 13 (0.65%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.55%) GRC
12 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
13 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.35%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 4 (0.20%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 340 (17.03%) Docker
2 234 (11.72%) Active Directory
3 230 (11.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.71%) Virtual Machines
5 72 (3.61%) VMware ESXi
5 72 (3.61%) vSphere
6 71 (3.56%) Hyper-V
7 55 (2.75%) VMware NSX
8 49 (2.45%) NFS
9 36 (1.80%) Firmware
10 35 (1.75%) Oracle RAC
11 32 (1.60%) KVM
12 21 (1.05%) Postfix
13 17 (0.85%) GPFS
14 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.50%) Ceph
15 10 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.40%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
17 7 (0.35%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 421 (21.08%) Ansible
2 412 (20.63%) Kubernetes
2 412 (20.63%) Terraform
3 173 (8.66%) Grafana
4 151 (7.56%) Prometheus
5 72 (3.61%) Puppet
6 55 (2.75%) Progress Chef
7 48 (2.40%) vCenter Server
8 46 (2.30%) Oracle RMAN
9 32 (1.60%) Data Guard
10 30 (1.50%) Packer
11 28 (1.40%) Nagios
12 27 (1.35%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 22 (1.10%) Argo
14 22 (1.10%) Kibana
14 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
14 22 (1.10%) vRealize
15 20 (1.00%) Podman
16 19 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 309 (15.47%) VMware
2 286 (14.32%) Oracle
3 276 (13.82%) Microsoft
4 223 (11.17%) Red Hat
5 163 (8.16%) Splunk
6 125 (6.26%) Cisco
7 109 (5.46%) IBM
8 92 (4.61%) ServiceNow
9 68 (3.41%) CyberArk
10 67 (3.36%) Google
11 48 (2.40%) Palo Alto
12 44 (2.20%) SolarWinds
13 43 (2.15%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.00%) SAP
15 38 (1.90%) F5
16 35 (1.75%) Citrix
16 35 (1.75%) HP
17 34 (1.70%) NetApp
18 32 (1.60%) Sybase
19 29 (1.45%) Dynatrace