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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 42 31 30
Rank change year-on-year -11 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,933 1,777 2,525
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.94% 5.70% 5.64%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.52% 40.12% 39.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,228 1,064 1,676
10th Percentile £318 £356 £325
25th Percentile £400 £444 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £722 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.57% - -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 57 130
10th Percentile £12.50 £42.00 £25.10
25th Percentile £41.25 £56.25 £48.31
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £75.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £66.50 £61.00
% change year-on-year -5.06% +9.02% -6.15%

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 4,771 4,429 6,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.18% 14.21% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,182 2,762 4,264
10th Percentile £175 £198 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £444 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -6.58% +2.15% -10.14%
75th Percentile £563 £588 £596
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.24% - -8.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 156 399
10th Percentile £14.70 £16.18 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.05 £21.00 £16.89
Median hourly rate £23.54 £31.79 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -25.96% +25.90% -1.79%
75th Percentile £55.64 £64.63 £62.00
90th Percentile £69.12 £69.38 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.54 £28.50 £25.06
% change year-on-year -20.92% +13.74% +0.23%

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 6 February 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 6 February 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 6 February 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 -9 1,665 £508 -7.64% 777
UK excluding London -2 1,096 £480 -8.57% 690
London -16 638 £550 -8.33% 208
Work from Home -19 509 £492 -8.29% 339
South East 0 307 £475 -5.00% 212
North of England -2 278 £478 -13.09% 134
Midlands -6 185 £517 -6.00% 95
West Midlands -3 170 £525 -4.55% 60
Yorkshire 0 169 £500 -14.16% 31
South West -18 135 £550 -8.33% 108
North West -18 101 £452 -16.00% 85
Scotland -12 98 £450 -6.15% 82
East of England -10 92 £470 +9.30% 61
Northern Ireland +7 18 £400 +23.08% 5
East Midlands -28 15 £423 -15.50% 35
North East -16 13 £550 +12.82% 19
Wales -7 6 £571 +6.28% 6

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 79 (4.09%) Confluence
2 55 (2.85%) Apache
3 46 (2.38%) nginx
4 39 (2.02%) Microsoft Exchange
5 26 (1.35%) Apache Spark
6 20 (1.03%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (1.03%) OpenStack
7 17 (0.88%) SharePoint
8 15 (0.78%) WebLogic
8 15 (0.78%) WebSphere
9 14 (0.72%) Skype for Business
10 13 (0.67%) JBoss
10 13 (0.67%) Mattermost
10 13 (0.67%) TPMS
11 11 (0.57%) SAS
12 10 (0.52%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.36%) IIS
13 7 (0.36%) iPlanet
13 7 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
14 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 52 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (0.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.57%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 6 (0.31%) Weka
6 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.10%) Windchill
8 1 (0.052%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
8 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
8 1 (0.052%) Photoshop
8 1 (0.052%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 7 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.10%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.052%) Finacle
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.052%) RMDS
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.052%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 574 (29.69%) AWS
2 367 (18.99%) Azure
3 181 (9.36%) GitHub
4 143 (7.40%) GCP
5 141 (7.29%) OpenShift
6 113 (5.85%) AWS CloudFormation
7 111 (5.74%) Serverless
8 96 (4.97%) Amazon EC2
9 92 (4.76%) GitHub Actions
10 79 (4.09%) Amazon S3
11 70 (3.62%) Amazon ECS
12 66 (3.41%) Amazon EKS
13 65 (3.36%) AWS Lambda
14 59 (3.05%) Azure DevOps
15 55 (2.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 52 (2.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 49 (2.53%) IaaS
18 47 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
19 43 (2.22%) SaaS
20 36 (1.86%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 207 (10.71%) Firewall
2 147 (7.60%) DNS
3 131 (6.78%) TCP/IP
4 73 (3.78%) Network Security
5 55 (2.85%) VPN
6 47 (2.43%) SSH
7 45 (2.33%) DHCP
8 43 (2.22%) HTTP
9 42 (2.17%) SSL
10 35 (1.81%) SAN
11 30 (1.55%) VLAN
12 27 (1.40%) WAN
13 26 (1.35%) VSAN
14 25 (1.29%) Wireless
15 24 (1.24%) Kerberos
15 24 (1.24%) Skype
16 21 (1.09%) BGP
17 20 (1.03%) LAN
17 20 (1.03%) SMTP
18 19 (0.98%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (6.93%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.07%) Relational Database
3 90 (4.66%) SQL Server
4 80 (4.14%) Amazon RDS
5 72 (3.72%) MySQL
6 70 (3.62%) MongoDB
6 70 (3.62%) NoSQL
7 64 (3.31%) Oracle Database
8 51 (2.64%) Elasticsearch
9 27 (1.40%) Big Data
9 27 (1.40%) DB2
10 25 (1.29%) Hadoop
11 21 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
12 19 (0.98%) KDB
12 19 (0.98%) Kdb+
13 15 (0.78%) Apache Hive
14 13 (0.67%) Apache Cassandra
14 13 (0.67%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.67%) HBase
14 13 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 263 (13.61%) Jenkins
2 212 (10.97%) Git
3 203 (10.50%) GitLab
4 132 (6.83%) JIRA
5 49 (2.53%) JUnit
6 48 (2.48%) Sonatype Nexus
7 41 (2.12%) Bitbucket
8 31 (1.60%) Eclipse
9 25 (1.29%) Cucumber
9 25 (1.29%) Maven
10 21 (1.09%) Mockito
11 20 (1.03%) Liquibase
12 19 (0.98%) Burp Suite
13 17 (0.88%) Artifactory
14 16 (0.83%) Browser DevTools
14 16 (0.83%) JMeter
14 16 (0.83%) Metasploit
15 15 (0.78%) Android Studio
15 15 (0.78%) Visual Studio
15 15 (0.78%) Xcode
General
1 521 (26.95%) Social Skills
2 333 (17.23%) Finance
3 202 (10.45%) Analytical Skills
4 182 (9.42%) Public Sector
5 148 (7.66%) Banking
6 70 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
7 53 (2.74%) Financial Institution
8 44 (2.28%) Investment Banking
8 44 (2.28%) Military
9 39 (2.02%) Front Office
10 38 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
11 23 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 20 (1.03%) Legal
13 19 (0.98%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 14 (0.72%) Law
16 13 (0.67%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
17 12 (0.62%) Retail
18 11 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 286 (14.80%) Developer
2 239 (12.36%) Senior
3 178 (9.21%) DevOps Engineer
4 132 (6.83%) Software Engineer
5 124 (6.41%) Analyst
6 105 (5.43%) Architect
6 105 (5.43%) Java Developer
7 97 (5.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 89 (4.60%) Linux Engineer
8 89 (4.60%) Support Engineer
9 87 (4.50%) Platform Engineer
10 80 (4.14%) Administrator
11 78 (4.04%) Lead
12 74 (3.83%) AWS Engineer
13 68 (3.52%) Site Reliability Engineer
14 65 (3.36%) Site Engineer
15 61 (3.16%) AWS DevOps
16 55 (2.85%) Security Engineer
16 55 (2.85%) Senior Software Engineer
17 50 (2.59%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 156 (8.07%) Kafka
2 126 (6.52%) REST
3 123 (6.36%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.19%) Middleware
5 65 (3.36%) Node.js
5 65 (3.36%) Spring
6 59 (3.05%) RESTful
7 51 (2.64%) LDAP
8 50 (2.59%) React
9 49 (2.53%) JSON
10 47 (2.43%) XML
11 37 (1.91%) AngularJS
12 36 (1.86%) YAML
13 34 (1.76%) SOAP
14 33 (1.71%) Spring Boot
15 27 (1.40%) CSS
15 27 (1.40%) Web Services
16 26 (1.35%) .NET
16 26 (1.35%) OAuth
17 24 (1.24%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 106 (5.48%) Cloud Native
2 97 (5.02%) Data Centre
3 92 (4.76%) Linux Command Line
4 68 (3.52%) Management Information System
5 64 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (3.21%) Replication
7 57 (2.95%) Public Cloud
8 56 (2.90%) PKI
9 52 (2.69%) Equities
10 46 (2.38%) Onboarding
11 40 (2.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 37 (1.91%) Security Operations Centre
13 36 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
14 35 (1.81%) Data Structures
15 32 (1.66%) Enterprise Software
15 32 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
15 32 (1.66%) Product Ownership
16 30 (1.55%) Algorithms
17 29 (1.50%) Fixed Income
18 26 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 708 (36.63%) Windows
2 377 (19.50%) Unix
3 248 (12.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 135 (6.98%) Windows Server
5 85 (4.40%) Ubuntu
6 51 (2.64%) CentOS
7 35 (1.81%) Android
8 31 (1.60%) VMS
9 30 (1.55%) Mac OS
10 29 (1.50%) Solaris
11 27 (1.40%) Mac OS X
12 22 (1.14%) Windows 10
13 21 (1.09%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (1.03%) AIX
15 18 (0.93%) Embedded Linux
16 16 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
17 15 (0.78%) Kali Linux
18 13 (0.67%) Amazon Linux
19 12 (0.62%) Debian
20 10 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 592 (30.63%) CI/CD
2 486 (25.14%) DevOps
3 425 (21.99%) Agile
4 377 (19.50%) Problem-Solving
5 319 (16.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 308 (15.93%) Containerisation
7 231 (11.95%) Software Engineering
8 199 (10.29%) Observability
9 181 (9.36%) Cybersecurity
10 165 (8.54%) Computer Science
11 160 (8.28%) Test Automation
12 154 (7.97%) Continuous Improvement
12 154 (7.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 153 (7.92%) Microservices
14 147 (7.60%) Incident Response
15 140 (7.24%) Platform Engineering
16 130 (6.73%) High Availability
17 128 (6.62%) Performance Tuning
17 128 (6.62%) SIEM
18 123 (6.36%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 755 (39.06%) Python
2 357 (18.47%) SQL
3 348 (18.00%) Java
4 338 (17.49%) Bash
5 286 (14.80%) PowerShell
6 207 (10.71%) Shell Script
7 174 (9.00%) C++
8 129 (6.67%) JavaScript
9 115 (5.95%) Perl
10 81 (4.19%) C#
11 74 (3.83%) Go
12 55 (2.85%) C
13 43 (2.22%) Ruby
14 31 (1.60%) TypeScript
15 30 (1.55%) Rust
16 27 (1.40%) PHP
16 27 (1.40%) PL/SQL
17 22 (1.14%) Groovy
18 20 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
19 17 (0.88%) Ada
Qualifications
1 668 (34.56%) Security Cleared
2 479 (24.78%) SC Cleared
3 207 (10.71%) Degree
4 167 (8.64%) DV Cleared
5 116 (6.00%) Computer Science Degree
6 81 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (3.10%) AWS Certification
8 36 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
8 36 (1.86%) Master's Degree
9 32 (1.66%) Azure Certification
10 30 (1.55%) CISSP
10 30 (1.55%) CompTIA Security+
11 27 (1.40%) RHCE
12 25 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
13 21 (1.09%) CCNA
13 21 (1.09%) CCNP
14 20 (1.03%) OSCP
15 17 (0.88%) CompTIA CySA+
15 17 (0.88%) GPEN
16 16 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (3.10%) NIST
2 43 (2.22%) GDPR
2 43 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (2.17%) QA
4 30 (1.55%) SLA
5 19 (0.98%) Data Quality
5 19 (0.98%) PCI DSS
6 18 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (0.88%) NCSC
8 13 (0.67%) GLBA
9 11 (0.57%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 8 (0.41%) SOC 2
12 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
12 7 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
14 5 (0.26%) NIST 800
15 3 (0.16%) Actionable Recommendations
15 3 (0.16%) SEPA
16 2 (0.10%) GAAP
System Software
1 405 (20.95%) Docker
2 221 (11.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 164 (8.48%) Active Directory
4 75 (3.88%) vSphere
5 64 (3.31%) Virtual Machines
6 51 (2.64%) VMware ESXi
7 46 (2.38%) Hyper-V
8 29 (1.50%) GPFS
8 29 (1.50%) NFS
9 25 (1.29%) VMware NSX
10 21 (1.09%) KVM
11 17 (0.88%) Firmware
12 15 (0.78%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 13 (0.67%) HDFS
13 13 (0.67%) Oracle RAC
14 12 (0.62%) Lustre
14 12 (0.62%) Postfix
14 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
15 10 (0.52%) DFS Replication
16 9 (0.47%) QEMU
Systems Management
1 479 (24.78%) Kubernetes
2 403 (20.85%) Terraform
3 377 (19.50%) Ansible
4 212 (10.97%) Grafana
5 185 (9.57%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.83%) Puppet
7 64 (3.31%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.22%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.97%) Red Hat Satellite
10 37 (1.91%) vRealize
11 35 (1.81%) Argo
11 35 (1.81%) Packer
12 34 (1.76%) Kibana
13 31 (1.60%) Podman
14 28 (1.45%) SCOM
14 28 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
15 26 (1.35%) SCCM
16 23 (1.19%) Nessus
17 21 (1.09%) ITRS Geneos
18 18 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 305 (15.78%) Microsoft
2 304 (15.73%) VMware
3 261 (13.50%) Oracle
4 239 (12.36%) Splunk
5 220 (11.38%) Red Hat
6 112 (5.79%) Cisco
7 77 (3.98%) IBM
7 77 (3.98%) ServiceNow
8 53 (2.74%) Google
9 45 (2.33%) Dell
10 38 (1.97%) AppDynamics
10 38 (1.97%) CyberArk
11 29 (1.50%) Palo Alto
12 27 (1.40%) SolarWinds
13 26 (1.35%) CrowdStrike
14 23 (1.19%) NetApp
14 23 (1.19%) NVIDIA
15 22 (1.14%) Solace
15 22 (1.14%) Sybase
16 21 (1.09%) Commvault