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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -22 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,052 1,824 2,218
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.83% 5.55% 5.69%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.42% 41.71% 40.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,274 1,139 1,446
10th Percentile £358 £361 £350
25th Percentile £425 £429 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £705 £718 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 57 122
10th Percentile £35.96 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £51.69 £55.00 £62.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.26
% change year-on-year - -3.36% +3.48%

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 5,205 4,373 5,437
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.29% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,288 2,799 3,615
10th Percentile £191 £198 £200
25th Percentile £319 £313 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +1.44% -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 258 335
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.45
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.92 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.05 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.53 £42.50
% change year-on-year +18.33% -46.99% +45.05%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 -22 1,735 £525 - 1,282
UK excluding London -15 1,229 £500 - 788
London -51 605 £550 -5.17% 593
Work from Home -28 552 £500 -4.31% 490
South East +3 360 £520 +2.21% 250
North of England -13 311 £500 - 152
South West 0 191 £550 -4.35% 115
North West -4 161 £500 +25.00% 93
Midlands -22 134 £474 -0.26% 70
Yorkshire -24 131 £500 -4.76% 29
West Midlands -27 113 £470 -3.59% 41
Scotland -27 109 £425 -15.00% 49
East of England -11 101 £479 -2.30% 129
Wales +7 29 £465 +64.60% 11
North East -21 26 £480 -16.52% 30
East Midlands -9 18 £513 +22.02% 29
Northern Ireland -1 2 - - 34

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 82 (4.00%) Confluence
2 51 (2.49%) Apache
3 31 (1.51%) nginx
4 29 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
5 26 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
6 20 (0.97%) OpenStack
6 20 (0.97%) WebLogic
7 19 (0.93%) Apache Spark
7 19 (0.93%) Tomcat
8 18 (0.88%) SAS
9 13 (0.63%) JBoss
10 11 (0.54%) SharePoint
10 11 (0.54%) WebSphere
11 9 (0.44%) IIS
11 9 (0.44%) NetWeaver
12 7 (0.34%) CICS
13 6 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.24%) CloudStack
14 5 (0.24%) CMS
15 4 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 21 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.19%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.049%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.049%) InDesign
6 1 (0.049%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.049%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.049%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.049%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.049%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.049%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 606 (29.53%) AWS
2 495 (24.12%) Azure
3 161 (7.85%) GitHub
4 158 (7.70%) GCP
5 101 (4.92%) OpenShift
6 94 (4.58%) Entra ID
6 94 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
7 88 (4.29%) Amazon S3
7 88 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
8 85 (4.14%) Amazon EC2
9 62 (3.02%) Amazon EKS
10 60 (2.92%) Serverless
11 58 (2.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 55 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
13 54 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
14 53 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
14 53 (2.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 52 (2.53%) IaaS
16 41 (2.00%) SaaS
17 40 (1.95%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (11.11%) Firewall
2 217 (10.58%) DNS
3 135 (6.58%) TCP/IP
4 110 (5.36%) DHCP
5 85 (4.14%) VPN
6 74 (3.61%) Network Security
7 73 (3.56%) SAN
8 50 (2.44%) SSL
9 48 (2.34%) WAN
10 47 (2.29%) VSAN
11 41 (2.00%) SSH
12 40 (1.95%) HTTP
13 39 (1.90%) LAN
14 34 (1.66%) VLAN
15 32 (1.56%) SNMP
16 22 (1.07%) NAS
17 21 (1.02%) Ethernet
17 21 (1.02%) IPsec
18 19 (0.93%) HTTPS
19 18 (0.88%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (6.19%) SQL Server
2 114 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
3 93 (4.53%) Oracle Database
4 69 (3.36%) MySQL
5 67 (3.27%) MongoDB
6 65 (3.17%) Relational Database
7 53 (2.58%) Amazon RDS
8 37 (1.80%) Amazon Aurora
8 37 (1.80%) Elasticsearch
8 37 (1.80%) NoSQL
9 31 (1.51%) RDBMS
10 27 (1.32%) DynamoDB
11 26 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
12 23 (1.12%) Big Data
13 21 (1.02%) SAP HANA
14 20 (0.97%) Data Lake
15 19 (0.93%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.83%) Power BI
16 17 (0.83%) Sybase ASE
17 16 (0.78%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 223 (10.87%) Jenkins
2 214 (10.43%) Git
3 185 (9.02%) GitLab
4 144 (7.02%) JIRA
5 41 (2.00%) Maven
6 32 (1.56%) Mockito
7 31 (1.51%) SonarQube
8 29 (1.41%) Bitbucket
9 27 (1.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 21 (1.02%) Artifactory
10 21 (1.02%) Eclipse
11 17 (0.83%) JUnit
12 16 (0.78%) Selenium
13 15 (0.73%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.63%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 12 (0.58%) DbUnit
15 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
16 11 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
16 11 (0.54%) Gradle
16 11 (0.54%) jMock
General
1 421 (20.52%) Social Skills
2 299 (14.57%) Finance
3 221 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
4 200 (9.75%) Public Sector
5 145 (7.07%) Banking
6 78 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
7 38 (1.85%) Military
8 33 (1.61%) Front Office
8 33 (1.61%) Telecoms
9 28 (1.36%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.27%) Legal
11 23 (1.12%) Aerospace
11 23 (1.12%) Retail
12 21 (1.02%) Law
13 20 (0.97%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 16 (0.78%) Financial Institution
15 16 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
16 11 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (0.54%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 299 (14.57%) Senior
2 218 (10.62%) Linux Engineer
3 198 (9.65%) Developer
4 186 (9.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 174 (8.48%) DevOps Engineer
6 118 (5.75%) Software Engineer
7 105 (5.12%) Architect
8 91 (4.43%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (4.04%) Analyst
10 81 (3.95%) Lead
11 78 (3.80%) Java Developer
12 73 (3.56%) Cloud Engineer
13 71 (3.46%) Consultant
14 66 (3.22%) AWS Engineer
14 66 (3.22%) Support Engineer
15 57 (2.78%) Administrator
16 56 (2.73%) Senior Developer
17 53 (2.58%) Site Reliability Engineer
18 51 (2.49%) Security Engineer
18 51 (2.49%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (5.60%) Kafka
2 109 (5.31%) REST
3 71 (3.46%) Middleware
4 69 (3.36%) Elastic Stack
5 55 (2.68%) .NET
5 55 (2.68%) Spring
6 51 (2.49%) RESTful
7 46 (2.24%) Spring Boot
8 45 (2.19%) Web Services
9 43 (2.10%) LDAP
10 39 (1.90%) Node.js
11 36 (1.75%) JSON
12 33 (1.61%) ActiveMQ
13 32 (1.56%) YAML
14 30 (1.46%) XML
15 28 (1.36%) SOAP
16 24 (1.17%) React
17 23 (1.12%) FastAPI
18 22 (1.07%) RabbitMQ
19 21 (1.02%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 134 (6.53%) Cloud Native
2 131 (6.38%) Data Centre
3 128 (6.24%) Onboarding
4 102 (4.97%) Linux Command Line
5 97 (4.73%) PKI
6 87 (4.24%) Distributed Systems
7 80 (3.90%) Replication
8 70 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
9 65 (3.17%) Public Cloud
10 60 (2.92%) Management Information System
11 57 (2.78%) Security Posture
12 50 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.75%) Product Ownership
14 35 (1.71%) Embedded Systems
15 34 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
16 33 (1.61%) Clustering
17 32 (1.56%) Operational Technology
18 30 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
19 27 (1.32%) Private Cloud
20 26 (1.27%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 784 (38.21%) Windows
2 430 (20.96%) Unix
3 347 (16.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 232 (11.31%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.41%) Ubuntu
6 70 (3.41%) AIX
7 58 (2.83%) Solaris
8 44 (2.14%) CentOS
9 35 (1.71%) Embedded Linux
10 25 (1.22%) SUSE
10 25 (1.22%) VMS
10 25 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
11 19 (0.93%) Oracle Linux
12 18 (0.88%) Rocky
12 18 (0.88%) Windows 10
13 17 (0.83%) Mac OS
14 16 (0.78%) Android
14 16 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.73%) Debian
16 14 (0.68%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 586 (28.56%) CI/CD
2 509 (24.81%) DevOps
3 383 (18.66%) Infrastructure as Code
4 372 (18.13%) Agile
5 310 (15.11%) Problem-Solving
6 272 (13.26%) Containerisation
7 267 (13.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 242 (11.79%) Migration
9 220 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
10 211 (10.28%) Software Engineering
11 204 (9.94%) High Availability
12 203 (9.89%) Observability
13 196 (9.55%) Platform Engineering
14 187 (9.11%) Root Cause Analysis
15 175 (8.53%) ITIL
15 175 (8.53%) Performance Tuning
16 163 (7.94%) SIEM
17 156 (7.60%) Test Automation
18 148 (7.21%) AI
19 143 (6.97%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 717 (34.94%) Python
2 388 (18.91%) Bash
2 388 (18.91%) PowerShell
3 358 (17.45%) SQL
4 251 (12.23%) Java
5 153 (7.46%) Shell Script
6 131 (6.38%) C++
7 91 (4.43%) JavaScript
8 76 (3.70%) C
9 73 (3.56%) C#
10 61 (2.97%) PL/SQL
11 58 (2.83%) Perl
12 47 (2.29%) Go
13 39 (1.90%) Bicep
14 22 (1.07%) Ada
15 21 (1.02%) Search Processing Language
16 20 (0.97%) Rust
17 18 (0.88%) Groovy
17 18 (0.88%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.63%) Scala
Qualifications
1 804 (39.18%) Security Cleared
2 604 (29.43%) SC Cleared
3 225 (10.96%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.87%) Degree
5 71 (3.46%) AWS Certification
6 69 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (2.92%) CISSP
8 57 (2.78%) Cisco Certification
9 51 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
10 47 (2.29%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.32%) RHCE
12 26 (1.27%) CCNP
12 26 (1.27%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
13 23 (1.12%) CCNA
14 19 (0.93%) CISM
15 18 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 16 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 13 (0.63%) RHCSA
17 13 (0.63%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.14%) NIST
2 79 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 61 (2.97%) QA
4 30 (1.46%) SLA
5 25 (1.22%) Data Quality
6 24 (1.17%) NCSC
7 21 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
7 21 (1.02%) GDPR
8 20 (0.97%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.68%) PCI DSS
10 13 (0.63%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.58%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.54%) GRC
13 9 (0.44%) SOC 2
14 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 15022
15 6 (0.29%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.29%) JSP 440
15 6 (0.29%) NIST 800
16 5 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 336 (16.37%) Docker
2 272 (13.26%) Active Directory
3 250 (12.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (4.43%) Hyper-V
5 82 (4.00%) Virtual Machines
5 82 (4.00%) vSphere
6 64 (3.12%) VMware NSX
7 63 (3.07%) VMware ESXi
8 42 (2.05%) NFS
9 40 (1.95%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (1.80%) Firmware
11 30 (1.46%) KVM
12 18 (0.88%) Postfix
13 15 (0.73%) Ceph
14 12 (0.58%) GPFS
14 12 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
15 10 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.44%) Embedded Firmware
16 9 (0.44%) Microsoft App-V
17 8 (0.39%) Squid
Systems Management
1 464 (22.61%) Terraform
2 452 (22.03%) Ansible
3 423 (20.61%) Kubernetes
4 169 (8.24%) Grafana
5 146 (7.12%) Prometheus
6 84 (4.09%) Puppet
7 62 (3.02%) Progress Chef
8 52 (2.53%) Oracle RMAN
9 42 (2.05%) vCenter Server
10 39 (1.90%) Data Guard
11 36 (1.75%) SCCM
12 31 (1.51%) Nagios
13 30 (1.46%) Packer
14 28 (1.36%) Red Hat Satellite
15 27 (1.32%) ZABBIX
16 25 (1.22%) Podman
17 24 (1.17%) NetBackup
17 24 (1.17%) VxRail
18 23 (1.12%) Kibana
19 22 (1.07%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 347 (16.91%) VMware
2 317 (15.45%) Microsoft
3 304 (14.81%) Oracle
4 228 (11.11%) Red Hat
5 158 (7.70%) Splunk
6 130 (6.34%) Cisco
7 113 (5.51%) ServiceNow
8 100 (4.87%) IBM
9 84 (4.09%) CyberArk
10 73 (3.56%) Google
11 51 (2.49%) SolarWinds
12 50 (2.44%) Palo Alto
13 49 (2.39%) BeyondTrust
14 44 (2.14%) SAP
15 42 (2.05%) F5
16 40 (1.95%) NetApp
17 39 (1.90%) HP
18 34 (1.66%) Citrix
19 31 (1.51%) Dynatrace
20 29 (1.41%) Dell