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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 34
Rank change year-on-year -20 +3 -8
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,918 1,681 2,204
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.93% 5.87% 5.16%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.27% 42.29% 38.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,186 1,079 1,465
10th Percentile £345 £375 £340
25th Percentile £413 £440 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £605 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £519 £548
% change year-on-year -5.59% -5.21% +4.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 39 114
10th Percentile £33.95 £43.85 £39.60
25th Percentile £43.81 £55.00 £55.00
Median hourly rate £60.33 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.18% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £70.95 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -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 4,763 3,975 5,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.87% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,040 2,618 3,897
10th Percentile £186 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £469 £474
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% -1.11% -5.20%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 348 175 402
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.11 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.59% -2.22% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.38 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £19.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +75.03% -13.33% -28.00%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -21 1,604 £513 -6.82% 749
UK excluding London -12 1,151 £490 -5.59% 595
London -49 548 £550 -8.33% 222
Work from Home -31 483 £500 -4.76% 298
South East -4 324 £500 -4.76% 195
North of England -12 290 £478 -9.05% 98
South West -5 161 £538 -10.42% 120
Midlands -17 150 £500 +0.05% 54
Yorkshire -19 150 £478 -11.16% 23
West Midlands -14 130 £493 -6.19% 29
North West -13 126 £472 -4.07% 55
Scotland -21 99 £475 - 33
East of England -16 91 £475 +0.26% 86
Wales +1 27 £465 -20.65% 16
East Midlands -26 17 £530 +16.61% 25
Northern Ireland +9 14 £425 +30.77% 7
North East -25 14 £446 -18.12% 22

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 78 (4.07%) Confluence
2 52 (2.71%) Apache
3 31 (1.62%) nginx
4 25 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.04%) Tomcat
7 18 (0.94%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.89%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.68%) SAS
10 12 (0.63%) OpenStack
11 11 (0.57%) CICS
11 11 (0.57%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
13 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.36%) JBoss
14 7 (0.36%) SharePoint
15 6 (0.31%) IIS
15 6 (0.31%) TPMS
15 6 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 23 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.052%) InDesign
6 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.052%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.052%) Odoo
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
6 1 (0.052%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 537 (28.00%) AWS
2 387 (20.18%) Azure
3 164 (8.55%) GitHub
4 118 (6.15%) OpenShift
5 116 (6.05%) GCP
6 94 (4.90%) GitHub Actions
7 83 (4.33%) Amazon EC2
7 83 (4.33%) Amazon S3
8 68 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
9 66 (3.44%) Amazon EKS
10 62 (3.23%) Serverless
11 61 (3.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 60 (3.13%) AWS CloudFormation
13 54 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
14 46 (2.40%) Entra ID
15 44 (2.29%) IaaS
16 41 (2.14%) Microsoft 365
17 40 (2.09%) PaaS
18 39 (2.03%) Amazon ECS
18 39 (2.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 181 (9.44%) Firewall
2 141 (7.35%) DNS
3 93 (4.85%) TCP/IP
4 77 (4.01%) VPN
5 66 (3.44%) SAN
6 63 (3.28%) Network Security
7 49 (2.55%) WAN
8 47 (2.45%) DHCP
9 42 (2.19%) LAN
10 35 (1.82%) SNMP
10 35 (1.82%) VSAN
11 33 (1.72%) SSH
11 33 (1.72%) SSL
12 29 (1.51%) HTTP
13 26 (1.36%) NAS
14 23 (1.20%) Ethernet
15 19 (0.99%) BGP
16 18 (0.94%) IPsec
16 18 (0.94%) VLAN
16 18 (0.94%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (5.89%) PostgreSQL
1 113 (5.89%) SQL Server
2 75 (3.91%) MySQL
3 71 (3.70%) Oracle Database
4 64 (3.34%) Relational Database
5 63 (3.28%) MongoDB
6 51 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
7 42 (2.19%) Elasticsearch
8 37 (1.93%) Amazon Aurora
9 27 (1.41%) NoSQL
10 25 (1.30%) DynamoDB
11 20 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
11 20 (1.04%) SAP HANA
12 18 (0.94%) Big Data
13 17 (0.89%) DB2
13 17 (0.89%) KDB
14 15 (0.78%) Power BI
15 14 (0.73%) Kdb+
16 13 (0.68%) Sybase ASE
17 12 (0.63%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 201 (10.48%) Jenkins
2 170 (8.86%) GitLab
3 169 (8.81%) Git
4 138 (7.19%) JIRA
5 33 (1.72%) Maven
6 28 (1.46%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.36%) Mockito
8 24 (1.25%) Eclipse
9 21 (1.09%) JUnit
10 18 (0.94%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.94%) Sonatype Nexus
11 15 (0.78%) Artifactory
12 14 (0.73%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.73%) Rational Rhapsody
12 14 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.68%) Jaeger
13 13 (0.68%) jMock
14 11 (0.57%) Bitbucket Server
15 10 (0.52%) Cucumber
16 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 385 (20.07%) Social Skills
2 263 (13.71%) Finance
3 202 (10.53%) Public Sector
4 151 (7.87%) Analytical Skills
5 118 (6.15%) Banking
6 77 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
7 45 (2.35%) Military
8 24 (1.25%) Financial Institution
8 24 (1.25%) Front Office
9 23 (1.20%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.15%) Retail
11 21 (1.09%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.04%) Law
12 20 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
13 17 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
14 16 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 16 (0.83%) Legal
15 15 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 12 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 245 (12.77%) Senior
2 193 (10.06%) Developer
3 180 (9.38%) Linux Engineer
4 178 (9.28%) DevOps Engineer
5 137 (7.14%) Software Engineer
6 125 (6.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 107 (5.58%) Analyst
8 106 (5.53%) Architect
9 98 (5.11%) Lead
10 78 (4.07%) Administrator
11 74 (3.86%) AWS Engineer
11 74 (3.86%) Java Developer
12 66 (3.44%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 61 (3.18%) Consultant
14 56 (2.92%) Platform Engineer
14 56 (2.92%) Site Engineer
15 53 (2.76%) Security Engineer
16 51 (2.66%) AWS DevOps
17 47 (2.45%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 47 (2.45%) Embedded Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (4.85%) Kafka
2 80 (4.17%) REST
3 74 (3.86%) Elastic Stack
4 71 (3.70%) Middleware
5 50 (2.61%) LDAP
5 50 (2.61%) Spring Boot
6 49 (2.55%) Node.js
6 49 (2.55%) Spring
7 44 (2.29%) Web Services
8 42 (2.19%) RESTful
9 37 (1.93%) .NET
10 35 (1.82%) YAML
11 28 (1.46%) AngularJS
12 26 (1.36%) JSON
12 26 (1.36%) XML
13 25 (1.30%) ActiveMQ
13 25 (1.30%) SOAP
14 24 (1.25%) React
15 22 (1.15%) CSS
16 21 (1.09%) Flash
Miscellaneous
1 154 (8.03%) Data Centre
2 106 (5.53%) Cloud Native
3 78 (4.07%) Linux Command Line
3 78 (4.07%) Onboarding
4 69 (3.60%) Distributed Systems
5 68 (3.55%) Management Information System
6 63 (3.28%) PKI
7 58 (3.02%) Replication
8 49 (2.55%) Public Cloud
9 48 (2.50%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
11 42 (2.19%) Security Posture
12 36 (1.88%) Product Ownership
13 32 (1.67%) Enterprise Storage
14 31 (1.62%) Embedded Systems
15 30 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
15 30 (1.56%) Security Operations Centre
16 26 (1.36%) Operational Technology
17 24 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
18 23 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 728 (37.96%) Windows
2 377 (19.66%) Unix
3 292 (15.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 179 (9.33%) Windows Server
5 96 (5.01%) Ubuntu
6 56 (2.92%) AIX
7 43 (2.24%) CentOS
7 43 (2.24%) Solaris
8 35 (1.82%) Embedded Linux
9 29 (1.51%) VMS
10 25 (1.30%) Android
11 24 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (1.15%) Debian
12 22 (1.15%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.99%) Mac OS
14 14 (0.73%) SUSE
15 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
15 12 (0.63%) Windows 10
16 11 (0.57%) Oracle Linux
17 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 538 (28.05%) CI/CD
2 457 (23.83%) DevOps
3 360 (18.77%) Agile
4 296 (15.43%) Problem-Solving
5 288 (15.02%) Infrastructure as Code
6 244 (12.72%) Containerisation
7 208 (10.84%) Software Engineering
8 184 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 184 (9.59%) Migration
8 184 (9.59%) Observability
9 160 (8.34%) Performance Tuning
10 157 (8.19%) High Availability
11 149 (7.77%) SIEM
12 148 (7.72%) Continuous Improvement
13 147 (7.66%) Root Cause Analysis
14 136 (7.09%) ITIL
15 133 (6.93%) Computer Science
16 132 (6.88%) Incident Response
17 131 (6.83%) Microservices
18 128 (6.67%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 632 (32.95%) Python
2 325 (16.94%) SQL
3 274 (14.29%) Bash
4 269 (14.03%) PowerShell
5 254 (13.24%) Java
6 158 (8.24%) Shell Script
7 130 (6.78%) C++
8 103 (5.37%) JavaScript
9 65 (3.39%) Perl
10 59 (3.08%) C
11 58 (3.02%) C#
12 49 (2.55%) Go
13 47 (2.45%) PL/SQL
14 26 (1.36%) Ruby
14 26 (1.36%) TypeScript
15 23 (1.20%) Rust
16 21 (1.09%) Ada
16 21 (1.09%) MATLAB
17 19 (0.99%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.83%) PHP
Qualifications
1 749 (39.05%) Security Cleared
2 548 (28.57%) SC Cleared
3 221 (11.52%) DV Cleared
4 188 (9.80%) Degree
5 78 (4.07%) Computer Science Degree
6 73 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 56 (2.92%) Cisco Certification
8 54 (2.82%) CISSP
9 51 (2.66%) AWS Certification
10 45 (2.35%) CompTIA Security+
11 36 (1.88%) RHCE
12 34 (1.77%) Azure Certification
13 26 (1.36%) CCNP
14 25 (1.30%) CCNA
15 20 (1.04%) CISM
15 20 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
16 19 (0.99%) Oracle Certification
17 18 (0.94%) OCP
18 17 (0.89%) CompTIA CySA+
19 16 (0.83%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (4.33%) NIST
2 72 (3.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 53 (2.76%) QA
4 50 (2.61%) SLA
5 28 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials
5 28 (1.46%) GDPR
6 23 (1.20%) NCSC
7 17 (0.89%) PCI DSS
8 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
9 11 (0.57%) Disclosure Scotland
9 11 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 9 (0.47%) Data Quality
10 9 (0.47%) GRC
11 8 (0.42%) NIST 800
11 8 (0.42%) SOC 2
12 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
13 6 (0.31%) GLBA
13 6 (0.31%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 5 (0.26%) DICOM
System Software
1 314 (16.37%) Docker
2 225 (11.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 193 (10.06%) Active Directory
4 79 (4.12%) Virtual Machines
5 68 (3.55%) vSphere
6 67 (3.49%) Hyper-V
7 62 (3.23%) VMware ESXi
8 51 (2.66%) NFS
9 46 (2.40%) VMware NSX
10 40 (2.09%) Firmware
11 29 (1.51%) KVM
12 24 (1.25%) Oracle RAC
13 23 (1.20%) GPFS
14 21 (1.09%) Postfix
15 14 (0.73%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 13 (0.68%) Ceph
17 9 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.42%) Squid
19 7 (0.36%) BitLocker
19 7 (0.36%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 391 (20.39%) Ansible
2 382 (19.92%) Kubernetes
3 358 (18.67%) Terraform
4 176 (9.18%) Grafana
5 144 (7.51%) Prometheus
6 70 (3.65%) Puppet
7 45 (2.35%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.14%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.98%) Oracle RMAN
10 30 (1.56%) Podman
11 28 (1.46%) Red Hat Satellite
11 28 (1.46%) vRealize
12 27 (1.41%) Packer
13 26 (1.36%) Kibana
14 25 (1.30%) Data Guard
15 24 (1.25%) ZABBIX
16 23 (1.20%) Nagios
17 22 (1.15%) Tivoli
18 21 (1.09%) Argo
19 20 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 312 (16.27%) VMware
2 265 (13.82%) Oracle
3 255 (13.30%) Microsoft
4 227 (11.84%) Red Hat
5 185 (9.65%) Splunk
6 124 (6.47%) Cisco
7 94 (4.90%) IBM
8 82 (4.28%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.76%) Palo Alto
10 48 (2.50%) CyberArk
11 43 (2.24%) Google
12 40 (2.09%) Dell
13 37 (1.93%) F5
14 36 (1.88%) SolarWinds
15 34 (1.77%) NVIDIA
16 33 (1.72%) Citrix
16 33 (1.72%) HP
17 30 (1.56%) SAP
18 29 (1.51%) BeyondTrust
19 26 (1.36%) NetApp