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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 34 31
Rank change year-on-year -21 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,019 1,835 2,246
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.57% 5.56%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.47% 41.46% 39.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,256 1,162 1,452
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £724 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 55 132
10th Percentile £35.44 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.63 £59.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
Median % change year-on-year - -1.89% +6.00%
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.88 £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 5,115 4,426 5,633
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.44% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,248 2,856 3,718
10th Percentile £193 £200 £193
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £465
% change year-on-year - -3.25% +3.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 250 384
10th Percentile £15.63 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.68 £18.11 £16.30
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.88% -43.11%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.11 £67.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £21.59 £31.00
% change year-on-year +22.60% -30.35% +3.33%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 1,711 £525 -2.05% 812
UK excluding London -18 1,222 £500 - 596
London -54 584 £550 -5.17% 308
Work from Home -29 547 £500 -2.44% 310
South East +4 347 £518 +0.98% 200
North of England -9 329 £494 -1.20% 113
South West -4 178 £540 -6.09% 92
North West -12 169 £485 +20.65% 61
Midlands -17 145 £474 -0.26% 66
Yorkshire -21 142 £500 -4.76% 29
West Midlands -18 123 £470 -5.53% 38
Scotland -28 105 £450 -9.27% 41
East of England -19 95 £475 -3.06% 77
Wales +6 29 £465 +64.60% 9
North East -25 24 £500 +4.71% 24
East Midlands -8 19 £513 +13.89% 28
Northern Ireland -3 2 - - 13

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 (4.16%) Confluence
2 52 (2.58%) Apache
3 33 (1.63%) nginx
4 29 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 28 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (1.04%) WebLogic
7 20 (0.99%) Tomcat
8 19 (0.94%) Apache Spark
9 18 (0.89%) SAS
10 17 (0.84%) OpenStack
11 12 (0.59%) JBoss
12 11 (0.54%) CICS
13 10 (0.50%) SharePoint
14 9 (0.45%) IIS
14 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
14 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
16 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
16 5 (0.25%) CMS
17 4 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 20 (0.99%) 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%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.099%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.050%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.050%) InDesign
6 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) 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 (0.099%) 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 FAH
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%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 597 (29.57%) AWS
2 459 (22.73%) Azure
3 156 (7.73%) GitHub
4 148 (7.33%) GCP
5 107 (5.30%) OpenShift
6 90 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
7 89 (4.41%) Amazon EC2
7 89 (4.41%) Amazon S3
7 89 (4.41%) Entra ID
8 74 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
9 62 (3.07%) Amazon EKS
10 59 (2.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 59 (2.92%) Serverless
11 55 (2.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 54 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
13 51 (2.53%) AWS CloudFormation
13 51 (2.53%) AWS Lambda
14 44 (2.18%) IaaS
15 41 (2.03%) SaaS
16 39 (1.93%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 209 (10.35%) Firewall
2 184 (9.11%) DNS
3 115 (5.70%) TCP/IP
4 85 (4.21%) DHCP
5 84 (4.16%) VPN
6 77 (3.81%) Network Security
7 74 (3.67%) SAN
8 47 (2.33%) WAN
9 44 (2.18%) SSL
10 40 (1.98%) VSAN
11 37 (1.83%) LAN
12 36 (1.78%) SSH
13 33 (1.63%) HTTP
14 32 (1.58%) VLAN
15 31 (1.54%) SNMP
16 24 (1.19%) NAS
17 22 (1.09%) Ethernet
17 22 (1.09%) IPsec
18 19 (0.94%) BGP
19 18 (0.89%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (6.39%) SQL Server
2 118 (5.84%) PostgreSQL
3 96 (4.75%) Oracle Database
4 70 (3.47%) MySQL
5 68 (3.37%) MongoDB
5 68 (3.37%) Relational Database
6 57 (2.82%) Amazon RDS
7 39 (1.93%) Amazon Aurora
7 39 (1.93%) Elasticsearch
8 31 (1.54%) RDBMS
9 30 (1.49%) NoSQL
10 29 (1.44%) DynamoDB
11 25 (1.24%) Data Warehouse
12 21 (1.04%) Big Data
12 21 (1.04%) SAP HANA
13 19 (0.94%) Oracle Database 12c
14 18 (0.89%) DataStage
14 18 (0.89%) Sybase ASE
15 17 (0.84%) Data Lake
15 17 (0.84%) KDB
Development Applications
1 216 (10.70%) Jenkins
2 199 (9.86%) Git
3 183 (9.06%) GitLab
4 143 (7.08%) JIRA
5 38 (1.88%) Maven
6 33 (1.63%) Mockito
7 32 (1.58%) SonarQube
8 26 (1.29%) Bitbucket
9 25 (1.24%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.04%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.04%) Eclipse
11 19 (0.94%) JUnit
12 15 (0.74%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.69%) DbUnit
14 13 (0.64%) jMock
15 12 (0.59%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 12 (0.59%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
17 10 (0.50%) TeamCity
18 9 (0.45%) Selenium
General
1 409 (20.26%) Social Skills
2 292 (14.46%) Finance
3 206 (10.20%) Public Sector
4 190 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
5 140 (6.93%) Banking
6 73 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
7 40 (1.98%) Military
8 31 (1.54%) Front Office
9 27 (1.34%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.19%) Legal
11 24 (1.19%) Retail
12 20 (0.99%) Financial Institution
12 20 (0.99%) Law
13 19 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 18 (0.89%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (0.89%) Manufacturing
15 15 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 290 (14.36%) Senior
2 205 (10.15%) Developer
3 202 (10.00%) Linux Engineer
4 179 (8.87%) DevOps Engineer
5 169 (8.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 117 (5.79%) Software Engineer
7 101 (5.00%) Architect
8 87 (4.31%) Analyst
9 83 (4.11%) Platform Engineer
10 82 (4.06%) Java Developer
11 81 (4.01%) Lead
12 68 (3.37%) Cloud Engineer
13 66 (3.27%) Consultant
14 64 (3.17%) AWS Engineer
15 61 (3.02%) Support Engineer
16 57 (2.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
17 56 (2.77%) Administrator
17 56 (2.77%) Senior Developer
18 53 (2.63%) DBA
19 52 (2.58%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 108 (5.35%) Kafka
2 100 (4.95%) REST
3 71 (3.52%) Middleware
4 68 (3.37%) Elastic Stack
5 57 (2.82%) Spring
6 50 (2.48%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.38%) .NET
7 48 (2.38%) Web Services
8 47 (2.33%) RESTful
9 44 (2.18%) LDAP
10 42 (2.08%) Node.js
11 34 (1.68%) ActiveMQ
12 30 (1.49%) JSON
13 27 (1.34%) SOAP
13 27 (1.34%) YAML
14 26 (1.29%) AngularJS
15 25 (1.24%) React
16 23 (1.14%) XML
17 21 (1.04%) Keycloak
18 20 (0.99%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 139 (6.88%) Data Centre
2 135 (6.69%) Cloud Native
3 120 (5.94%) Onboarding
4 105 (5.20%) Linux Command Line
5 92 (4.56%) Distributed Systems
6 91 (4.51%) PKI
7 78 (3.86%) Replication
8 63 (3.12%) Hybrid Cloud
8 63 (3.12%) Public Cloud
9 60 (2.97%) Management Information System
10 58 (2.87%) Security Posture
11 51 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
12 37 (1.83%) Product Ownership
13 32 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.54%) Clustering
15 29 (1.44%) Embedded Systems
15 29 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
15 29 (1.44%) Enterprise Storage
16 28 (1.39%) Operational Technology
17 24 (1.19%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 764 (37.84%) Windows
2 428 (21.20%) Unix
3 336 (16.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 209 (10.35%) Windows Server
5 107 (5.30%) Ubuntu
6 75 (3.71%) AIX
7 61 (3.02%) Solaris
8 41 (2.03%) CentOS
9 31 (1.54%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.39%) VMS
11 23 (1.14%) SUSE
11 23 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.89%) Windows 10
13 17 (0.84%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.79%) Android
14 16 (0.79%) Oracle Linux
15 15 (0.74%) Mac OS X
15 15 (0.74%) Rocky
16 14 (0.69%) Debian
16 14 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 570 (28.23%) CI/CD
2 490 (24.27%) DevOps
3 360 (17.83%) Agile
3 360 (17.83%) Infrastructure as Code
4 295 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
5 276 (13.67%) Containerisation
6 250 (12.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 236 (11.69%) Migration
8 209 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
9 204 (10.10%) Software Engineering
10 194 (9.61%) High Availability
11 192 (9.51%) Observability
12 179 (8.87%) Performance Tuning
13 175 (8.67%) Platform Engineering
14 173 (8.57%) Root Cause Analysis
15 164 (8.12%) ITIL
16 156 (7.73%) SIEM
17 140 (6.93%) Test Automation
18 139 (6.88%) AI
19 135 (6.69%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 692 (34.27%) Python
2 354 (17.53%) Bash
3 350 (17.34%) PowerShell
4 349 (17.29%) SQL
5 254 (12.58%) Java
6 156 (7.73%) Shell Script
7 119 (5.89%) C++
8 86 (4.26%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.32%) C#
10 65 (3.22%) C
11 64 (3.17%) PL/SQL
12 54 (2.67%) Perl
13 52 (2.58%) Go
14 35 (1.73%) Bicep
15 23 (1.14%) Ada
16 21 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
17 20 (0.99%) Rust
17 20 (0.99%) TypeScript
18 16 (0.79%) Groovy
19 14 (0.69%) PHP
Qualifications
1 786 (38.93%) Security Cleared
2 582 (28.83%) SC Cleared
3 228 (11.29%) DV Cleared
4 175 (8.67%) Degree
5 76 (3.76%) AWS Certification
6 67 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.97%) CISSP
8 59 (2.92%) Cisco Certification
9 48 (2.38%) Azure Certification
10 45 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
11 30 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
12 28 (1.39%) CCNP
13 27 (1.34%) RHCE
14 24 (1.19%) CCNA
15 22 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
16 19 (0.94%) CISM
17 17 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 13 (0.64%) GIAC
18 13 (0.64%) RHCSA
18 13 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (4.16%) NIST
2 79 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (2.82%) QA
4 32 (1.58%) SLA
5 25 (1.24%) Data Quality
6 22 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
6 22 (1.09%) GDPR
7 21 (1.04%) NCSC
8 20 (0.99%) Disclosure Scotland
9 15 (0.74%) PCI DSS
10 12 (0.59%) GRC
10 12 (0.59%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 8 (0.40%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.25%) ISO 15022
17 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 331 (16.39%) Docker
2 254 (12.58%) Active Directory
3 236 (11.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.66%) Virtual Machines
5 75 (3.71%) Hyper-V
5 75 (3.71%) vSphere
6 65 (3.22%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (2.77%) VMware NSX
8 46 (2.28%) NFS
9 40 (1.98%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (1.73%) Firmware
10 35 (1.73%) KVM
11 20 (0.99%) Postfix
12 14 (0.69%) Ceph
13 13 (0.64%) GPFS
14 10 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
16 7 (0.35%) Squid
16 7 (0.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 446 (22.09%) Terraform
2 441 (21.84%) Ansible
3 421 (20.85%) Kubernetes
4 168 (8.32%) Grafana
5 145 (7.18%) Prometheus
6 75 (3.71%) Puppet
7 58 (2.87%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.58%) Oracle RMAN
9 47 (2.33%) vCenter Server
10 38 (1.88%) Data Guard
11 31 (1.54%) Nagios
12 28 (1.39%) Packer
13 26 (1.29%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.29%) ZABBIX
14 25 (1.24%) SCCM
15 24 (1.19%) Podman
16 22 (1.09%) Argo
16 22 (1.09%) Tivoli
17 20 (0.99%) NetBackup
17 20 (0.99%) Netcool
Vendors
1 325 (16.10%) VMware
2 304 (15.06%) Microsoft
3 300 (14.86%) Oracle
4 228 (11.29%) Red Hat
5 154 (7.63%) Splunk
6 130 (6.44%) Cisco
7 107 (5.30%) IBM
8 103 (5.10%) ServiceNow
9 77 (3.81%) CyberArk
10 71 (3.52%) Google
11 47 (2.33%) BeyondTrust
11 47 (2.33%) Palo Alto
11 47 (2.33%) SolarWinds
12 42 (2.08%) SAP
13 40 (1.98%) NetApp
14 39 (1.93%) F5
15 38 (1.88%) HP
16 33 (1.63%) Citrix
17 31 (1.54%) Sybase
18 29 (1.44%) Dynatrace