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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -21 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,123 1,847 2,074
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.87% 5.59% 5.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.59% 41.04% 39.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,326 1,103 1,221
10th Percentile £357 £338 £350
25th Percentile £435 £419 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £519 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.19% -3.44% -2.27%
75th Percentile £622 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £510 £492 £525
% change year-on-year +3.66% -6.29% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 77 114
10th Percentile £43.81 £34.39 £49.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £52.50 £65.00
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 £76.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +4.85%

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 5,362 4,501 5,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.63% 14.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,380 2,875 3,270
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £281 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £660 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £449
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.24% -0.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 408 301 250
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.65
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -53.43% +23.43%
75th Percentile £65.00 £49.50 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £57.38
% change year-on-year +3.38% -56.17% +43.44%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 1,790 £525 +0.48% 3,109
UK excluding London -21 1,180 £510 +3.66% 1,594
London -33 734 £535 -6.96% 1,557
Work from Home -22 572 £510 -1.73% 1,134
South East -16 330 £525 +10.53% 483
North of England -23 274 £500 +5.04% 232
South West -2 173 £575 +4.55% 257
North West -12 137 £493 +22.94% 136
Scotland -16 135 £450 -10.00% 108
Midlands -39 130 £477 -4.60% 158
East of England -8 116 £483 -3.50% 289
Yorkshire -32 112 £521 +4.25% 58
West Midlands -45 110 £476 -4.80% 94
North East -13 33 £475 -11.63% 39
Wales +12 28 £465 +3.33% 29
East Midlands -8 18 £491 +16.79% 63
Northern Ireland -2 3 - - 59

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 65 (3.06%) Confluence
2 46 (2.17%) Apache
3 41 (1.93%) nginx
4 28 (1.32%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (1.32%) WebLogic
5 24 (1.13%) Apache Spark
5 24 (1.13%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.04%) SharePoint
7 20 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
8 19 (0.89%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 19 (0.89%) Tomcat
9 17 (0.80%) IIS
10 15 (0.71%) JBoss
11 13 (0.61%) SAS
12 11 (0.52%) WebSphere
13 7 (0.33%) CMS
14 6 (0.28%) MTS
14 6 (0.28%) WebLogic Portal
15 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
15 5 (0.24%) WordPress
Applications
1 27 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.14%) Houdini
5 3 (0.14%) NUKE
6 2 (0.094%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.094%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 1 (0.047%) Simulink
7 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.047%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.094%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.094%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.047%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.047%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 639 (30.10%) AWS
2 540 (25.44%) Azure
3 213 (10.03%) GCP
4 169 (7.96%) GitHub
5 113 (5.32%) Entra ID
6 110 (5.18%) OpenShift
7 104 (4.90%) GitHub Actions
8 98 (4.62%) Amazon S3
9 97 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
10 85 (4.00%) Amazon EC2
11 74 (3.49%) Serverless
12 72 (3.39%) AWS CloudFormation
13 66 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
14 64 (3.01%) Amazon EKS
14 64 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
15 62 (2.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 56 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 51 (2.40%) IaaS
18 46 (2.17%) Datadog
19 40 (1.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.74%) DNS
2 215 (10.13%) Firewall
3 170 (8.01%) TCP/IP
4 132 (6.22%) DHCP
5 91 (4.29%) Network Security
6 90 (4.24%) VPN
7 77 (3.63%) SAN
8 56 (2.64%) SSL
9 47 (2.21%) HTTP
9 47 (2.21%) SSH
10 45 (2.12%) WAN
11 38 (1.79%) VLAN
12 31 (1.46%) BGP
12 31 (1.46%) LAN
13 28 (1.32%) Kerberos
13 28 (1.32%) VSAN
14 27 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
15 23 (1.08%) Wireless
16 22 (1.04%) 5G
16 22 (1.04%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (6.03%) PostgreSQL
2 119 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 103 (4.85%) Oracle Database
4 79 (3.72%) Relational Database
5 67 (3.16%) MySQL
6 61 (2.87%) Amazon RDS
7 54 (2.54%) MongoDB
8 50 (2.36%) NoSQL
9 37 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
9 37 (1.74%) Elasticsearch
10 29 (1.37%) Big Data
10 29 (1.37%) RDBMS
11 27 (1.27%) Amazon Aurora
12 24 (1.13%) Data Lake
13 21 (0.99%) Power BI
13 21 (0.99%) Redis
14 19 (0.89%) DynamoDB
14 19 (0.89%) Hadoop
15 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 12c
16 16 (0.75%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 298 (14.04%) Git
2 269 (12.67%) Jenkins
3 241 (11.35%) GitLab
4 164 (7.72%) JIRA
5 43 (2.03%) Maven
6 36 (1.70%) SonarQube
7 34 (1.60%) Bitbucket
8 27 (1.27%) Artifactory
8 27 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.13%) Selenium
10 20 (0.94%) Gradle
10 20 (0.94%) Mockito
11 19 (0.89%) JUnit
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 17 (0.80%) Cucumber
14 14 (0.66%) Visual Studio
15 12 (0.57%) TeamCity
16 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 10 (0.47%) JMeter
18 9 (0.42%) LoadRunner
General
1 466 (21.95%) Social Skills
2 351 (16.53%) Finance
3 251 (11.82%) Analytical Skills
4 179 (8.43%) Banking
5 167 (7.87%) Public Sector
6 86 (4.05%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (2.64%) Telecoms
8 48 (2.26%) Investment Banking
9 35 (1.65%) Front Office
9 35 (1.65%) Military
10 28 (1.32%) Legal
11 25 (1.18%) Aerospace
12 24 (1.13%) Law
13 22 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 17 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (0.80%) Retail
15 15 (0.71%) Manufacturing
16 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
16 11 (0.52%) Organisational Skills
16 11 (0.52%) Police
Job Titles
1 325 (15.31%) Senior
2 234 (11.02%) Linux Engineer
3 218 (10.27%) Developer
4 214 (10.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 195 (9.19%) DevOps Engineer
6 105 (4.95%) Platform Engineer
7 100 (4.71%) Architect
8 94 (4.43%) Software Engineer
9 83 (3.91%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (3.82%) Support Engineer
11 80 (3.77%) Java Developer
12 77 (3.63%) Analyst
13 74 (3.49%) Consultant
14 71 (3.34%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
15 68 (3.20%) Lead
16 67 (3.16%) AWS Engineer
17 63 (2.97%) Administrator
18 59 (2.78%) Network Engineer
19 53 (2.50%) Automation Engineer
19 53 (2.50%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 535 (25.20%) Terraform
2 149 (7.02%) Kafka
3 140 (6.59%) REST
4 83 (3.91%) Middleware
5 76 (3.58%) Elastic Stack
6 70 (3.30%) .NET
7 62 (2.92%) Spring
8 60 (2.83%) RESTful
9 54 (2.54%) Spring Boot
9 54 (2.54%) Web Services
10 50 (2.36%) LDAP
11 46 (2.17%) JSON
12 44 (2.07%) React
13 42 (1.98%) XML
14 38 (1.79%) HTML
15 35 (1.65%) Flask
15 35 (1.65%) SOAP
16 32 (1.51%) Keycloak
17 31 (1.46%) Django
17 31 (1.46%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 168 (7.91%) Onboarding
2 147 (6.92%) Cloud Native
3 131 (6.17%) Data Centre
4 115 (5.42%) PKI
5 108 (5.09%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.43%) Replication
7 92 (4.33%) Distributed Systems
8 73 (3.44%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.20%) Management Information System
10 65 (3.06%) Public Cloud
11 59 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
12 52 (2.45%) Security Posture
13 42 (1.98%) Private Cloud
14 41 (1.93%) Product Ownership
15 40 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
15 40 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
16 39 (1.84%) Embedded Systems
16 39 (1.84%) Operational Technology
17 37 (1.74%) Enterprise Storage
18 33 (1.55%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 805 (37.92%) Windows
2 434 (20.44%) Unix
3 366 (17.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 252 (11.87%) Windows Server
5 110 (5.18%) Ubuntu
6 63 (2.97%) CentOS
7 54 (2.54%) Solaris
8 53 (2.50%) AIX
9 32 (1.51%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.41%) Windows 10
11 28 (1.32%) VMS
12 27 (1.27%) SUSE
13 23 (1.08%) Rocky
14 18 (0.85%) Mac OS
15 16 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
16 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
17 12 (0.57%) Debian
18 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 685 (32.27%) CI/CD
2 595 (28.03%) DevOps
3 481 (22.66%) Infrastructure as Code
4 403 (18.98%) Agile
5 342 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
6 331 (15.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 316 (14.88%) Containerisation
8 280 (13.19%) Continuous Improvement
9 265 (12.48%) Observability
10 245 (11.54%) Platform Engineering
11 238 (11.21%) Migration
12 221 (10.41%) Software Engineering
13 220 (10.36%) Root Cause Analysis
14 196 (9.23%) High Availability
15 189 (8.90%) Configuration Management
16 185 (8.71%) Test Automation
17 182 (8.57%) ITIL
18 176 (8.29%) Cybersecurity
18 176 (8.29%) Stakeholder Management
19 172 (8.10%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 796 (37.49%) Python
2 468 (22.04%) Bash
3 420 (19.78%) PowerShell
4 385 (18.13%) SQL
5 266 (12.53%) Java
6 161 (7.58%) Shell Script
7 120 (5.65%) C++
8 89 (4.19%) JavaScript
9 86 (4.05%) Perl
10 79 (3.72%) C#
11 66 (3.11%) C
12 59 (2.78%) PL/SQL
13 58 (2.73%) Go
14 44 (2.07%) Bicep
15 39 (1.84%) Groovy
16 24 (1.13%) TypeScript
17 18 (0.85%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.75%) Korn
18 16 (0.75%) Rust
19 15 (0.71%) Ada
Qualifications
1 801 (37.73%) Security Cleared
2 559 (26.33%) SC Cleared
3 254 (11.96%) DV Cleared
4 189 (8.90%) Degree
5 77 (3.63%) AWS Certification
6 63 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 62 (2.92%) CISSP
8 57 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
9 56 (2.64%) Azure Certification
10 55 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 29 (1.37%) CISM
12 25 (1.18%) CCNP
12 25 (1.18%) RHCE
13 21 (0.99%) CCNA
14 20 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.85%) ISTQB
16 17 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 16 (0.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 15 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (3.72%) NIST
1 79 (3.72%) QA
2 71 (3.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (1.32%) SLA
4 26 (1.22%) Data Quality
5 23 (1.08%) GDPR
6 19 (0.89%) GRC
7 18 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
8 17 (0.80%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.75%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.71%) NCSC
11 13 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
14 7 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.28%) MISRA
16 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
16 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
17 4 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 396 (18.65%) Docker
2 297 (13.99%) Active Directory
3 237 (11.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 82 (3.86%) Hyper-V
5 80 (3.77%) vSphere
6 67 (3.16%) Virtual Machines
6 67 (3.16%) VMware ESXi
7 47 (2.21%) VMware NSX
8 38 (1.79%) Oracle RAC
9 35 (1.65%) Firmware
10 34 (1.60%) NFS
11 25 (1.18%) KVM
11 25 (1.18%) Virtual Servers
12 13 (0.61%) Ceph
13 12 (0.57%) Embedded Firmware
13 12 (0.57%) GPFS
13 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
15 10 (0.47%) Postfix
16 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 503 (23.69%) Kubernetes
2 480 (22.61%) Ansible
3 202 (9.51%) Grafana
4 181 (8.53%) Prometheus
5 93 (4.38%) Puppet
6 63 (2.97%) Progress Chef
7 54 (2.54%) SCCM
8 48 (2.26%) Oracle RMAN
9 41 (1.93%) Kibana
10 39 (1.84%) Data Guard
10 39 (1.84%) Microsoft Intune
11 30 (1.41%) vCenter Server
12 27 (1.27%) Nagios
12 27 (1.27%) VxRail
13 26 (1.22%) NetBackup
13 26 (1.22%) Red Hat Satellite
14 25 (1.18%) Podman
15 24 (1.13%) Packer
16 21 (0.99%) Argo
16 21 (0.99%) Istio
Vendors
1 358 (16.86%) Microsoft
2 337 (15.87%) VMware
3 294 (13.85%) Oracle
4 221 (10.41%) Red Hat
5 176 (8.29%) Splunk
6 124 (5.84%) Cisco
7 120 (5.65%) ServiceNow
8 102 (4.80%) Google
9 90 (4.24%) IBM
10 84 (3.96%) CyberArk
11 50 (2.36%) NetApp
12 44 (2.07%) SolarWinds
13 42 (1.98%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (1.88%) F5
15 39 (1.84%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.74%) Dynatrace
17 36 (1.70%) SAP
18 35 (1.65%) Dell
19 30 (1.41%) Tenable
20 28 (1.32%) Veeam