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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 58 36 30
Rank change year-on-year -22 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,107 1,872 2,097
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.81% 5.64% 5.57%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.31% 41.01% 39.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,319 1,135 1,233
10th Percentile £358 £333 £350
25th Percentile £440 £418 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £713 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £516 £490 £525
% change year-on-year +5.36% -6.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 72 117
10th Percentile £43.60 £32.25 £50.25
25th Percentile £56.06 £52.88 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +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 5,360 4,565 5,302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.75% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,387 2,924 3,268
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £470
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -4.31% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £420 £444
% change year-on-year +7.14% -5.41% -1.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 413 311 249
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.33 £16.30
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £23.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% -54.55% +21.04%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £23.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +12.04% -60.00% +35.29%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -22 1,777 £525 +1.01% 2,423
UK excluding London -26 1,163 £516 +5.36% 1,242
London -34 740 £535 -5.31% 1,232
Work from Home -28 561 £513 - 1,210
South East -14 330 £536 +12.93% 348
North of England -33 271 £500 +5.15% 196
South West -2 169 £575 +4.55% 210
North West -25 134 £497 +23.63% 106
Scotland -16 132 £475 -5.00% 79
Midlands -52 125 £476 -4.80% 136
Yorkshire -37 113 £521 +4.25% 62
East of England -12 111 £496 +1.02% 206
West Midlands -50 106 £475 -6.31% 81
Wales +15 32 £465 +3.33% 28
North East -11 32 £480 -10.70% 29
East Midlands -3 17 £481 +14.52% 55
Northern Ireland -4 3 - - 60

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 69 (3.27%) Confluence
2 46 (2.18%) Apache
3 42 (1.99%) nginx
4 28 (1.33%) WebLogic
5 23 (1.09%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.04%) SharePoint
7 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.95%) Tomcat
8 19 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 18 (0.85%) IIS
10 17 (0.81%) Apache Spark
11 15 (0.71%) JBoss
11 15 (0.71%) SAS
12 12 (0.57%) 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 29 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.14%) Houdini
4 3 (0.14%) NUKE
5 2 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.095%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.047%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.047%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.047%) Simulink
6 1 (0.047%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
3 4 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.14%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.095%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.095%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.047%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.047%) Magento
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 General Ledger
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.047%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.047%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 619 (29.38%) AWS
2 542 (25.72%) Azure
3 214 (10.16%) GCP
4 168 (7.97%) GitHub
5 117 (5.55%) OpenShift
6 116 (5.51%) Entra ID
7 107 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
8 97 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
9 89 (4.22%) Amazon S3
10 79 (3.75%) Amazon EC2
11 71 (3.37%) Serverless
12 70 (3.32%) AWS CloudFormation
13 63 (2.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 63 (2.99%) Amazon EKS
14 61 (2.90%) Microsoft 365
15 58 (2.75%) AWS Lambda
16 54 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 52 (2.47%) IaaS
18 46 (2.18%) Datadog
19 43 (2.04%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 228 (10.82%) DNS
2 218 (10.35%) Firewall
3 173 (8.21%) TCP/IP
4 134 (6.36%) DHCP
5 92 (4.37%) Network Security
6 91 (4.32%) VPN
7 76 (3.61%) SAN
8 56 (2.66%) SSL
9 48 (2.28%) SSH
10 45 (2.14%) HTTP
11 43 (2.04%) WAN
12 40 (1.90%) VLAN
13 31 (1.47%) BGP
14 29 (1.38%) Kerberos
14 29 (1.38%) LAN
15 27 (1.28%) VSAN
15 27 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
16 25 (1.19%) Wireless
17 23 (1.09%) 5G
18 21 (1.00%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (5.70%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (5.22%) SQL Server
3 105 (4.98%) Oracle Database
4 77 (3.65%) Relational Database
5 63 (2.99%) MySQL
6 56 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
7 48 (2.28%) MongoDB
8 45 (2.14%) NoSQL
9 38 (1.80%) Data Warehouse
10 35 (1.66%) Elasticsearch
11 29 (1.38%) RDBMS
12 25 (1.19%) Data Lake
13 20 (0.95%) Big Data
13 20 (0.95%) Power BI
13 20 (0.95%) Redis
14 19 (0.90%) Amazon Aurora
15 18 (0.85%) Oracle Database 12c
16 17 (0.81%) DynamoDB
17 16 (0.76%) Hadoop
17 16 (0.76%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 305 (14.48%) Git
2 269 (12.77%) Jenkins
3 241 (11.44%) GitLab
4 170 (8.07%) JIRA
5 44 (2.09%) Maven
6 35 (1.66%) Bitbucket
7 34 (1.61%) SonarQube
8 29 (1.38%) Artifactory
8 29 (1.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 24 (1.14%) Selenium
10 21 (1.00%) Gradle
10 21 (1.00%) Mockito
11 20 (0.95%) Cucumber
11 20 (0.95%) JUnit
12 18 (0.85%) Eclipse
13 14 (0.66%) Visual Studio
14 11 (0.52%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 11 (0.52%) JMeter
14 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
15 10 (0.47%) LoadRunner
General
1 477 (22.64%) Social Skills
2 355 (16.85%) Finance
3 239 (11.34%) Analytical Skills
4 181 (8.59%) Banking
5 157 (7.45%) Public Sector
6 78 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 56 (2.66%) Telecoms
8 49 (2.33%) Investment Banking
9 36 (1.71%) Front Office
10 35 (1.66%) Military
11 28 (1.33%) Legal
12 25 (1.19%) Aerospace
13 24 (1.14%) Law
14 21 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 17 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 17 (0.81%) Retail
16 14 (0.66%) Manufacturing
17 13 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
18 11 (0.52%) Financial Institution
19 10 (0.47%) Police
Job Titles
1 327 (15.52%) Senior
2 232 (11.01%) Linux Engineer
3 223 (10.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 214 (10.16%) Developer
5 195 (9.25%) DevOps Engineer
6 107 (5.08%) Platform Engineer
7 104 (4.94%) Architect
8 92 (4.37%) Software Engineer
9 82 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
9 82 (3.89%) Support Engineer
10 75 (3.56%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 74 (3.51%) Java Developer
12 72 (3.42%) Analyst
12 72 (3.42%) Consultant
13 67 (3.18%) Administrator
13 67 (3.18%) AWS Engineer
14 65 (3.08%) Lead
15 56 (2.66%) Network Engineer
16 52 (2.47%) DBA
17 51 (2.42%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 538 (25.53%) Terraform
2 146 (6.93%) Kafka
3 145 (6.88%) REST
4 85 (4.03%) Middleware
5 73 (3.46%) Elastic Stack
6 70 (3.32%) .NET
7 57 (2.71%) Spring
8 55 (2.61%) Web Services
9 54 (2.56%) LDAP
9 54 (2.56%) RESTful
10 50 (2.37%) Spring Boot
11 45 (2.14%) JSON
12 44 (2.09%) React
13 40 (1.90%) XML
14 35 (1.66%) Flask
14 35 (1.66%) SOAP
15 32 (1.52%) ARM Templates
15 32 (1.52%) Django
15 32 (1.52%) Keycloak
16 31 (1.47%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 170 (8.07%) Onboarding
2 149 (7.07%) Cloud Native
3 125 (5.93%) Data Centre
4 115 (5.46%) PKI
5 107 (5.08%) Linux Command Line
6 94 (4.46%) Replication
7 92 (4.37%) Distributed Systems
8 74 (3.51%) Hybrid Cloud
9 68 (3.23%) Management Information System
10 64 (3.04%) Public Cloud
11 60 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
12 56 (2.66%) Security Posture
13 42 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
14 41 (1.95%) Operational Technology
14 41 (1.95%) Private Cloud
15 39 (1.85%) Embedded Systems
15 39 (1.85%) Enterprise Storage
16 38 (1.80%) Product Ownership
17 36 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
18 34 (1.61%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 795 (37.73%) Windows
2 414 (19.65%) Unix
3 367 (17.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 248 (11.77%) Windows Server
5 110 (5.22%) Ubuntu
6 63 (2.99%) CentOS
7 52 (2.47%) Solaris
8 50 (2.37%) AIX
9 32 (1.52%) Embedded Linux
10 30 (1.42%) Windows 10
11 29 (1.38%) VMS
12 26 (1.23%) SUSE
13 25 (1.19%) macOS
14 24 (1.14%) Rocky
15 16 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.66%) Windows Server 2016
17 13 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
18 11 (0.52%) Amazon Linux
18 11 (0.52%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 684 (32.46%) CI/CD
2 597 (28.33%) DevOps
3 482 (22.88%) Infrastructure as Code
4 397 (18.84%) Agile
5 341 (16.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 338 (16.04%) Problem-Solving
7 320 (15.19%) Containerisation
8 285 (13.53%) Continuous Improvement
9 268 (12.72%) Observability
10 255 (12.10%) Platform Engineering
11 238 (11.30%) Migration
12 225 (10.68%) Software Engineering
13 221 (10.49%) Root Cause Analysis
14 197 (9.35%) Configuration Management
15 196 (9.30%) High Availability
16 186 (8.83%) Stakeholder Management
17 185 (8.78%) ITIL
17 185 (8.78%) Test Automation
18 184 (8.73%) Cybersecurity
19 168 (7.97%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 794 (37.68%) Python
2 480 (22.78%) Bash
3 421 (19.98%) PowerShell
4 377 (17.89%) SQL
5 258 (12.24%) Java
6 163 (7.74%) Shell Script
7 122 (5.79%) C++
8 87 (4.13%) Perl
9 85 (4.03%) JavaScript
10 78 (3.70%) C#
11 66 (3.13%) C
12 60 (2.85%) Go
13 58 (2.75%) PL/SQL
14 49 (2.33%) Bicep
15 41 (1.95%) Groovy
16 28 (1.33%) TypeScript
17 18 (0.85%) Search Processing Language
18 16 (0.76%) Korn
18 16 (0.76%) Rust
19 14 (0.66%) Ada
Qualifications
1 796 (37.78%) Security Cleared
2 550 (26.10%) SC Cleared
3 258 (12.24%) DV Cleared
4 182 (8.64%) Degree
5 79 (3.75%) AWS Certification
6 62 (2.94%) CISSP
6 62 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.71%) Azure Certification
8 55 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
9 50 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
10 30 (1.42%) CISM
11 24 (1.14%) CCNP
12 21 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
12 21 (1.00%) RHCE
13 20 (0.95%) CCNA
14 19 (0.90%) ISTQB
15 17 (0.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 15 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 15 (0.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 14 (0.66%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (3.61%) QA
2 70 (3.32%) NIST
3 60 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 27 (1.28%) SLA
5 26 (1.23%) Data Quality
6 23 (1.09%) GDPR
7 17 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
7 17 (0.81%) GRC
8 16 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.71%) Disclosure Scotland
9 15 (0.71%) NCSC
10 13 (0.62%) PCI DSS
11 11 (0.52%) ISO 31000
12 8 (0.38%) ISO 15022
12 8 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.33%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.33%) MISRA
14 5 (0.24%) ISO 9001
14 5 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA C
System Software
1 402 (19.08%) Docker
2 293 (13.91%) Active Directory
3 232 (11.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (3.75%) Hyper-V
4 79 (3.75%) vSphere
5 70 (3.32%) Virtual Machines
6 65 (3.08%) VMware ESXi
7 44 (2.09%) VMware NSX
8 38 (1.80%) Oracle RAC
9 36 (1.71%) Firmware
10 34 (1.61%) NFS
11 27 (1.28%) KVM
12 26 (1.23%) Virtual Servers
13 14 (0.66%) Ceph
14 13 (0.62%) Embedded Firmware
15 12 (0.57%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 11 (0.52%) GPFS
17 10 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
18 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 9 (0.43%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 510 (24.21%) Kubernetes
2 478 (22.69%) Ansible
3 195 (9.25%) Grafana
4 176 (8.35%) Prometheus
5 91 (4.32%) Puppet
6 60 (2.85%) Progress Chef
7 57 (2.71%) SCCM
8 48 (2.28%) Oracle RMAN
9 44 (2.09%) Microsoft Intune
10 39 (1.85%) Data Guard
11 33 (1.57%) Kibana
12 30 (1.42%) vCenter Server
13 28 (1.33%) Nagios
14 26 (1.23%) NetBackup
14 26 (1.23%) VxRail
15 25 (1.19%) Podman
15 25 (1.19%) Red Hat Satellite
16 23 (1.09%) Packer
17 22 (1.04%) Argo
18 21 (1.00%) Istio
Vendors
1 361 (17.13%) Microsoft
2 326 (15.47%) VMware
3 284 (13.48%) Oracle
4 221 (10.49%) Red Hat
5 174 (8.26%) Splunk
6 123 (5.84%) ServiceNow
7 116 (5.51%) Cisco
8 106 (5.03%) Google
9 95 (4.51%) IBM
10 76 (3.61%) CyberArk
11 52 (2.47%) NetApp
12 45 (2.14%) SolarWinds
13 38 (1.80%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.80%) F5
14 36 (1.71%) Palo Alto
15 35 (1.66%) Dell
16 33 (1.57%) BeyondTrust
16 33 (1.57%) SAP
17 30 (1.42%) Tenable
18 29 (1.38%) CrowdStrike