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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 32 32
Rank change year-on-year -20 0 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,001 1,831 2,284
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.64% 5.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.51% 41.70% 38.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,250 1,165 1,469
10th Percentile £350 £367 £340
25th Percentile £414 £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 £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 105 54 143
10th Percentile £35.18 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.44 £58.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.76 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - -0.38%

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 5,065 4,391 5,867
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.53% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,231 2,833 3,828
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £577 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 239 437
10th Percentile £15.53 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.31 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.86
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.46% -41.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £21.59 £31.13
% change year-on-year +20.43% -30.63% +6.23%

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 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 15 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 15 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 £518 -3.72% 1,094
UK excluding London -17 1,203 £500 - 1,045
London -47 576 £545 -5.22% 244
Work from Home -30 540 £500 - 699
South East -2 336 £518 -1.43% 282
North of England -13 313 £484 -3.20% 203
South West -1 185 £538 -6.52% 158
North West -18 153 £483 +20.15% 110
Midlands -5 148 £474 -0.26% 113
Yorkshire -23 144 £500 -4.76% 61
West Midlands -19 126 £470 -1.05% 57
Scotland -26 104 £450 -7.02% 81
East of England -22 91 £475 -3.06% 138
Wales +7 29 £465 +64.60% 38
North East -24 21 £413 -13.61% 33
East Midlands -8 19 £528 +16.06% 56
Northern Ireland -2 5 - - 47

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 85 (4.25%) Confluence
2 50 (2.50%) Apache
3 36 (1.80%) nginx
4 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.10%) Tomcat
7 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.90%) WebLogic
9 14 (0.70%) SAS
10 13 (0.65%) OpenStack
11 11 (0.55%) CICS
12 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
12 9 (0.45%) SharePoint
12 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.40%) IIS
13 8 (0.40%) JBoss
14 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
15 5 (0.25%) CMS
16 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.40%) 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 (0.100%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Cloudability
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 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
1 597 (29.84%) AWS
2 427 (21.34%) Azure
3 153 (7.65%) GitHub
4 139 (6.95%) GCP
5 112 (5.60%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.55%) Amazon S3
6 91 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
7 90 (4.50%) Amazon EC2
8 77 (3.85%) Entra ID
9 68 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
10 61 (3.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 59 (2.95%) Serverless
12 58 (2.90%) Amazon EKS
13 51 (2.55%) AWS CloudFormation
13 51 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 49 (2.45%) AWS Lambda
14 49 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
15 46 (2.30%) IaaS
16 41 (2.05%) PaaS
17 39 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 193 (9.65%) Firewall
2 168 (8.40%) DNS
3 100 (5.00%) TCP/IP
4 78 (3.90%) Network Security
5 75 (3.75%) SAN
5 75 (3.75%) VPN
6 68 (3.40%) DHCP
7 48 (2.40%) WAN
8 39 (1.95%) SSL
9 37 (1.85%) LAN
10 35 (1.75%) VSAN
11 32 (1.60%) SNMP
12 31 (1.55%) HTTP
12 31 (1.55%) SSH
13 28 (1.40%) NAS
14 27 (1.35%) VLAN
15 23 (1.15%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.10%) IPsec
17 21 (1.05%) BGP
18 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 123 (6.15%) SQL Server
2 119 (5.95%) PostgreSQL
3 89 (4.45%) Oracle Database
4 75 (3.75%) MySQL
5 72 (3.60%) Relational Database
6 67 (3.35%) MongoDB
7 57 (2.85%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.15%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.45%) RDBMS
11 27 (1.35%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.10%) Big Data
13 20 (1.00%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.95%) KDB
15 18 (0.90%) Data Warehouse
15 18 (0.90%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.85%) DataStage
16 17 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
17 15 (0.75%) Db2
Development Applications
1 213 (10.64%) Jenkins
2 189 (9.45%) GitLab
3 179 (8.95%) Git
4 150 (7.50%) 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
8 21 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
9 18 (0.90%) Artifactory
10 17 (0.85%) JUnit
11 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
13 13 (0.65%) jMock
14 12 (0.60%) Rational Rhapsody
15 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
16 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
17 8 (0.40%) TeamCity
General
1 396 (19.79%) Social Skills
2 283 (14.14%) Finance
3 209 (10.44%) Public Sector
4 177 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
5 137 (6.85%) Banking
6 74 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.85%) Military
8 29 (1.45%) Front Office
9 28 (1.40%) Telecoms
10 27 (1.35%) Investment Banking
11 25 (1.25%) Retail
12 24 (1.20%) Legal
13 21 (1.05%) Law
14 20 (1.00%) Financial Institution
15 19 (0.95%) Aerospace
15 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
17 17 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
18 15 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
19 10 (0.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 266 (13.29%) Senior
2 207 (10.34%) Developer
3 197 (9.85%) Linux Engineer
4 186 (9.30%) DevOps Engineer
5 160 (8.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 121 (6.05%) Software Engineer
7 100 (5.00%) Architect
8 96 (4.80%) Analyst
9 84 (4.20%) Lead
10 78 (3.90%) Java Developer
11 76 (3.80%) Platform Engineer
12 67 (3.35%) AWS Engineer
12 67 (3.35%) Consultant
13 64 (3.20%) Cloud Engineer
14 62 (3.10%) Support Engineer
15 57 (2.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 56 (2.80%) Administrator
17 52 (2.60%) DBA
18 51 (2.55%) Security Engineer
18 51 (2.55%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (4.90%) Kafka
2 92 (4.60%) REST
3 75 (3.75%) Middleware
4 71 (3.55%) Elastic Stack
5 56 (2.80%) Spring
6 50 (2.50%) Spring Boot
7 49 (2.45%) LDAP
8 47 (2.35%) Web Services
9 43 (2.15%) .NET
9 43 (2.15%) Node.js
9 43 (2.15%) RESTful
10 31 (1.55%) ActiveMQ
11 27 (1.35%) JSON
11 27 (1.35%) SOAP
12 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
12 26 (1.30%) React
12 26 (1.30%) YAML
13 24 (1.20%) XML
14 19 (0.95%) Django
14 19 (0.95%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 141 (7.05%) Data Centre
2 132 (6.60%) Cloud Native
3 104 (5.20%) Onboarding
4 98 (4.90%) Linux Command Line
5 86 (4.30%) PKI
6 79 (3.95%) Distributed Systems
7 74 (3.70%) Replication
8 58 (2.90%) Management Information System
8 58 (2.90%) Public Cloud
9 56 (2.80%) Security Posture
10 54 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
11 52 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
12 37 (1.85%) Product Ownership
13 29 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
13 29 (1.45%) Enterprise Storage
14 28 (1.40%) Embedded Systems
15 27 (1.35%) Clustering
15 27 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
15 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
16 25 (1.25%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 751 (37.53%) Windows
2 414 (20.69%) Unix
3 331 (16.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 192 (9.60%) Windows Server
5 103 (5.15%) Ubuntu
6 71 (3.55%) AIX
7 60 (3.00%) Solaris
8 40 (2.00%) CentOS
9 31 (1.55%) Embedded Linux
10 29 (1.45%) VMS
11 24 (1.20%) SUSE
11 24 (1.20%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.85%) Android
13 15 (0.75%) Mac OS
13 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
13 15 (0.75%) Oracle Linux
13 15 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.70%) Debian
14 14 (0.70%) Windows 10
15 13 (0.65%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 558 (27.89%) CI/CD
2 479 (23.94%) DevOps
3 363 (18.14%) Agile
4 343 (17.14%) Infrastructure as Code
5 297 (14.84%) Problem-Solving
6 271 (13.54%) Containerisation
7 228 (11.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 226 (11.29%) Migration
9 205 (10.24%) Software Engineering
10 187 (9.35%) High Availability
11 186 (9.30%) Continuous Improvement
12 180 (9.00%) Observability
13 172 (8.60%) Performance Tuning
14 166 (8.30%) Root Cause Analysis
15 157 (7.85%) Platform Engineering
16 156 (7.80%) ITIL
17 155 (7.75%) SIEM
18 136 (6.80%) Microservices
19 135 (6.75%) Test Automation
20 133 (6.65%) AI
Programming Languages
1 682 (34.08%) Python
2 337 (16.84%) SQL
3 333 (16.64%) Bash
4 319 (15.94%) PowerShell
5 250 (12.49%) Java
6 147 (7.35%) Shell Script
7 121 (6.05%) C++
8 87 (4.35%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.35%) C
10 62 (3.10%) C#
11 61 (3.05%) PL/SQL
12 55 (2.75%) Perl
13 50 (2.50%) Go
14 24 (1.20%) Ada
15 22 (1.10%) TypeScript
16 21 (1.05%) Bicep
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 20 (1.00%) Rust
18 16 (0.80%) PHP
19 14 (0.70%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 778 (38.88%) Security Cleared
2 579 (28.94%) SC Cleared
3 223 (11.14%) DV Cleared
4 177 (8.85%) Degree
5 71 (3.55%) AWS Certification
6 69 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 57 (2.85%) Cisco Certification
7 57 (2.85%) CISSP
8 51 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
9 45 (2.25%) Azure Certification
10 34 (1.70%) CompTIA Security+
11 29 (1.45%) RHCE
12 26 (1.30%) CCNA
13 24 (1.20%) CCNP
14 21 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.90%) CISM
16 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.80%) GIAC
17 14 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (4.30%) NIST
2 82 (4.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.85%) QA
4 35 (1.75%) SLA
5 24 (1.20%) NCSC
6 21 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
6 21 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
6 21 (1.05%) GDPR
7 17 (0.85%) Data Quality
8 16 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.55%) GRC
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.35%) ISO 20022
13 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 4 (0.20%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 337 (16.84%) Docker
2 239 (11.94%) Active Directory
3 237 (11.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (4.75%) Virtual Machines
5 73 (3.65%) Hyper-V
6 71 (3.55%) VMware ESXi
7 70 (3.50%) vSphere
8 57 (2.85%) VMware NSX
9 48 (2.40%) NFS
10 38 (1.90%) Oracle RAC
11 35 (1.75%) Firmware
12 32 (1.60%) KVM
13 21 (1.05%) Postfix
14 16 (0.80%) GPFS
15 12 (0.60%) Ceph
16 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
18 7 (0.35%) Squid
18 7 (0.35%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 423 (21.14%) Ansible
2 416 (20.79%) Terraform
3 406 (20.29%) Kubernetes
4 171 (8.55%) Grafana
5 147 (7.35%) Prometheus
6 72 (3.60%) Puppet
7 56 (2.80%) Progress Chef
8 50 (2.50%) Oracle RMAN
9 47 (2.35%) vCenter Server
10 35 (1.75%) Data Guard
11 30 (1.50%) Nagios
12 29 (1.45%) Packer
13 26 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 22 (1.10%) Podman
14 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
15 21 (1.05%) Argo
15 21 (1.05%) Kibana
15 21 (1.05%) vRealize
16 20 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 320 (15.99%) VMware
2 292 (14.59%) Oracle
3 283 (14.14%) Microsoft
4 224 (11.19%) Red Hat
5 159 (7.95%) Splunk
6 128 (6.40%) Cisco
7 111 (5.55%) IBM
8 95 (4.75%) ServiceNow
9 72 (3.60%) CyberArk
10 68 (3.40%) Google
11 46 (2.30%) SolarWinds
12 45 (2.25%) Palo Alto
13 44 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.00%) SAP
15 39 (1.95%) F5
16 37 (1.85%) NetApp
17 35 (1.75%) HP
18 34 (1.70%) Citrix
19 30 (1.50%) Sybase
20 28 (1.40%) Tenable