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 30 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 37 30 25
Rank change year-on-year -7 -5 +3
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,922 2,026 3,213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.62% 5.52% 6.84%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.86% 39.13% 44.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,168 1,199 2,152
10th Percentile £325 £350 £363
25th Percentile £412 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.49% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £645 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.10% - -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 102 144
10th Percentile £12.50 £47.63 £21.63
25th Percentile £44.39 £62.50 £48.32
Median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% +8.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £68.00 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £67.50 £65.00
% 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 4,704 5,177 7,231
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.74% 14.10% 15.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,000 3,185 4,907
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £273 £325 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -3.06% -2.97%
75th Percentile £569 £575 £615
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £445 £450
% change year-on-year -7.30% -1.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 232 355
10th Percentile £15.22 £16.25 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.95 £17.72
Median hourly rate £24.00 £52.50 £33.50
Median % change year-on-year -54.29% +56.72% +36.73%
75th Percentile £41.31 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.56 £53.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -57.43% +92.73% +22.22%

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 30 October 2025.

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 30 October 2025.

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 30 October 2025. 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 -7 1,617 £513 -6.82% 1,159
UK excluding London -2 1,085 £483 -8.10% 981
London -3 679 £567 -1.43% 438
Work from Home -5 559 £500 -4.76% 469
North of England +14 274 £492 -12.14% 138
South East +2 258 £475 -5.00% 430
Scotland +7 185 £500 +8.11% 48
Midlands -9 172 £500 -9.09% 106
West Midlands +1 161 £500 -11.89% 48
Yorkshire +23 150 £500 -15.97% 38
North West +1 118 £446 -15.05% 79
South West -31 103 £550 +2.33% 137
East of England -10 99 £475 -13.64% 108
North East -1 12 £550 +34.47% 21
East Midlands -24 11 £420 -6.46% 57
Northern Ireland 0 10 £350 -36.36% 16
Wales -12 5 £450 -14.29% 19

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 73 (3.80%) Confluence
2 68 (3.54%) Apache
3 40 (2.08%) JBoss
4 39 (2.03%) nginx
5 30 (1.56%) OpenStack
6 29 (1.51%) Microsoft Exchange
7 25 (1.30%) Apache Spark
8 24 (1.25%) WebSphere
9 20 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
9 20 (1.04%) WebLogic
10 19 (0.99%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.94%) Mattermost
11 18 (0.94%) Skype for Business
12 15 (0.78%) WebSphere Application Server
13 14 (0.73%) SharePoint
14 12 (0.62%) SAS
15 11 (0.57%) IIS
16 10 (0.52%) iPlanet
17 9 (0.47%) Documentum
18 8 (0.42%) FileNet
Applications
1 43 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
2 14 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.62%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 9 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 3 (0.16%) Simulink
6 3 (0.16%) Weka
7 2 (0.10%) Windchill
8 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.052%) OmniGraffle
8 1 (0.052%) Siemens NX
8 1 (0.052%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 8 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.21%) SAP IBP
3 4 (0.21%) Temenos T24
4 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.16%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.10%) Kondor
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle 11i
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.052%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.052%) Finacle
6 1 (0.052%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.052%) RMDS
6 1 (0.052%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.052%) SAP MDG
6 1 (0.052%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 568 (29.55%) AWS
2 376 (19.56%) Azure
3 171 (8.90%) GitHub
4 158 (8.22%) GCP
5 115 (5.98%) OpenShift
6 103 (5.36%) Amazon EC2
7 97 (5.05%) Serverless
8 96 (4.99%) Amazon S3
9 83 (4.32%) GitHub Actions
10 74 (3.85%) AWS CloudFormation
11 68 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
12 66 (3.43%) SaaS
12 66 (3.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 65 (3.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 59 (3.07%) IaaS
15 52 (2.71%) Entra ID
16 48 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
17 46 (2.39%) AWS Lambda
18 44 (2.29%) PaaS
19 43 (2.24%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 212 (11.03%) Firewall
2 161 (8.38%) DNS
3 137 (7.13%) TCP/IP
4 60 (3.12%) SSL
5 59 (3.07%) HTTP
6 58 (3.02%) Network Security
7 53 (2.76%) SAN
7 53 (2.76%) SSH
8 52 (2.71%) DHCP
9 41 (2.13%) VPN
10 33 (1.72%) SMTP
11 31 (1.61%) VLAN
12 26 (1.35%) Skype
12 26 (1.35%) WAN
12 26 (1.35%) Wireless
13 25 (1.30%) Ethernet
13 25 (1.30%) LAN
14 24 (1.25%) Internet
14 24 (1.25%) Kerberos
15 23 (1.20%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 133 (6.92%) Relational Database
2 123 (6.40%) PostgreSQL
3 95 (4.94%) MongoDB
3 95 (4.94%) SQL Server
4 79 (4.11%) NoSQL
5 77 (4.01%) Oracle Database
6 74 (3.85%) Amazon RDS
7 71 (3.69%) MySQL
8 55 (2.86%) DB2
9 47 (2.45%) Elasticsearch
10 25 (1.30%) Big Data
10 25 (1.30%) Data Warehouse
10 25 (1.30%) Hadoop
11 24 (1.25%) Amazon Aurora
12 20 (1.04%) RDBMS
13 18 (0.94%) Apache Cassandra
13 18 (0.94%) Redis
14 17 (0.88%) KDB
15 13 (0.68%) GIS
16 12 (0.62%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 314 (16.34%) Jenkins
2 277 (14.41%) Git
3 176 (9.16%) GitLab
4 151 (7.86%) JIRA
5 80 (4.16%) JUnit
6 63 (3.28%) Sonatype Nexus
7 49 (2.55%) Eclipse
8 45 (2.34%) Bitbucket
9 44 (2.29%) Maven
10 40 (2.08%) Visual Studio
11 30 (1.56%) Liquibase
12 27 (1.40%) Vagrant
13 26 (1.35%) SonarQube
14 25 (1.30%) Artifactory
14 25 (1.30%) Mockito
15 24 (1.25%) Gradle
16 19 (0.99%) Bitbucket Server
17 18 (0.94%) Browser DevTools
17 18 (0.94%) Cucumber
17 18 (0.94%) PyCharm
General
1 599 (31.17%) Social Skills
2 409 (21.28%) Finance
3 241 (12.54%) Analytical Skills
4 207 (10.77%) Banking
5 179 (9.31%) Public Sector
6 92 (4.79%) Investment Banking
7 67 (3.49%) Front Office
8 60 (3.12%) Financial Institution
9 51 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
10 50 (2.60%) Presentation Skills
11 37 (1.93%) Military
12 28 (1.46%) Telecoms
13 22 (1.14%) Manufacturing
14 21 (1.09%) Legal
15 20 (1.04%) Aerospace
16 19 (0.99%) Law
17 17 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 16 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
19 14 (0.73%) Electronics
20 13 (0.68%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 367 (19.09%) Developer
2 222 (11.55%) Senior
3 169 (8.79%) DevOps Engineer
4 143 (7.44%) Java Developer
5 128 (6.66%) Software Engineer
6 113 (5.88%) Linux Engineer
7 102 (5.31%) Analyst
8 100 (5.20%) Architect
9 99 (5.15%) Platform Engineer
10 95 (4.94%) Support Engineer
11 89 (4.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 77 (4.01%) Administrator
13 67 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
13 67 (3.49%) Senior Developer
14 65 (3.38%) C++ Software Engineer
15 64 (3.33%) Python Developer
16 60 (3.12%) Lead
17 57 (2.97%) Consultant
17 57 (2.97%) Security Engineer
18 56 (2.91%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 151 (7.86%) Kafka
1 151 (7.86%) REST
2 128 (6.66%) Elastic Stack
3 102 (5.31%) Spring
4 90 (4.68%) Middleware
5 82 (4.27%) RESTful
6 75 (3.90%) AngularJS
7 67 (3.49%) React
8 64 (3.33%) Node.js
9 55 (2.86%) SOAP
10 53 (2.76%) JSON
11 50 (2.60%) LDAP
12 49 (2.55%) JMS
13 47 (2.45%) Web Services
14 43 (2.24%) XML
15 42 (2.19%) FIX Protocol
16 39 (2.03%) CSS
17 36 (1.87%) OAuth
18 35 (1.82%) FastAPI
19 34 (1.77%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 99 (5.15%) Cloud Native
2 97 (5.05%) Linux Command Line
3 82 (4.27%) Distributed Systems
4 77 (4.01%) Management Information System
4 77 (4.01%) Replication
5 76 (3.95%) Data Centre
6 71 (3.69%) Data Structures
7 65 (3.38%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 64 (3.33%) Equities
9 61 (3.17%) Public Cloud
10 52 (2.71%) Onboarding
11 45 (2.34%) PKI
12 44 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
13 36 (1.87%) Security Posture
14 34 (1.77%) Virtual Team
15 33 (1.72%) Algorithms
15 33 (1.72%) Fixed Income
16 30 (1.56%) Private Cloud
17 29 (1.51%) Hedge funds
18 28 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 669 (34.81%) Windows
2 422 (21.96%) Unix
3 257 (13.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 133 (6.92%) Windows Server
5 86 (4.47%) Ubuntu
6 62 (3.23%) CentOS
7 43 (2.24%) VMS
8 36 (1.87%) Android
9 35 (1.82%) Solaris
10 32 (1.66%) Mac OS
11 27 (1.40%) Amazon Linux
11 27 (1.40%) Windows 10
12 26 (1.35%) Mac OS X
13 22 (1.14%) AIX
13 22 (1.14%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.68%) Apple iOS
14 13 (0.68%) Kali Linux
15 11 (0.57%) Debian
16 9 (0.47%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 541 (28.15%) CI/CD
2 497 (25.86%) DevOps
3 484 (25.18%) Agile
4 377 (19.61%) Problem-Solving
5 310 (16.13%) Containerisation
6 282 (14.67%) Infrastructure as Code
7 265 (13.79%) Software Engineering
8 178 (9.26%) Test Automation
9 157 (8.17%) Cybersecurity
10 154 (8.01%) Computer Science
11 152 (7.91%) Microservices
12 151 (7.86%) Observability
13 148 (7.70%) Performance Tuning
14 143 (7.44%) High Availability
15 135 (7.02%) Migration
16 133 (6.92%) Configuration Management
17 127 (6.61%) Platform Engineering
18 124 (6.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
19 119 (6.19%) ITIL
20 117 (6.09%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 829 (43.13%) Python
2 422 (21.96%) Java
3 398 (20.71%) SQL
4 318 (16.55%) Bash
5 283 (14.72%) PowerShell
6 233 (12.12%) C++
7 231 (12.02%) Shell Script
8 153 (7.96%) JavaScript
9 136 (7.08%) Perl
10 119 (6.19%) C#
11 85 (4.42%) Go
12 71 (3.69%) C
13 48 (2.50%) Groovy
14 38 (1.98%) TypeScript
15 36 (1.87%) Rust
16 28 (1.46%) PL/SQL
17 25 (1.30%) PHP
18 23 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
19 18 (0.94%) Ruby
20 17 (0.88%) Ada
Qualifications
1 497 (25.86%) Security Cleared
2 376 (19.56%) SC Cleared
3 197 (10.25%) Degree
4 101 (5.25%) DV Cleared
5 98 (5.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 65 (3.38%) AWS Certification
7 45 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
8 43 (2.24%) CISSP
9 40 (2.08%) Master's Degree
10 36 (1.87%) Azure Certification
11 35 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
12 31 (1.61%) Microsoft Certification
13 22 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 22 (1.14%) GCIH
14 21 (1.09%) CCNP
15 20 (1.04%) OSCP
16 18 (0.94%) CCNA
16 18 (0.94%) GCIA
17 16 (0.83%) GPEN
17 16 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (2.45%) NIST
2 44 (2.29%) QA
3 31 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 27 (1.40%) GDPR
5 22 (1.14%) Data Quality
6 17 (0.88%) NCSC
7 16 (0.83%) PCI DSS
7 16 (0.83%) SLA
8 15 (0.78%) HIPAA
9 10 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
10 9 (0.47%) SOC 2
11 8 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 5 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
13 4 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 4 (0.21%) HL7
14 3 (0.16%) GLBA
14 3 (0.16%) MiFID
15 2 (0.10%) Accessibility
15 2 (0.10%) Actionable Recommendations
15 2 (0.10%) Basel III
System Software
1 379 (19.72%) Docker
2 206 (10.72%) Active Directory
3 183 (9.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 62 (3.23%) vSphere
5 46 (2.39%) Virtual Machines
6 35 (1.82%) Hyper-V
7 34 (1.77%) VMware ESXi
8 28 (1.46%) Oracle RAC
9 22 (1.14%) DFS Replication
9 22 (1.14%) Postfix
10 20 (1.04%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.94%) Dovecot
12 16 (0.83%) KVM
12 16 (0.83%) NFS
13 14 (0.73%) GPFS
14 13 (0.68%) Squid
15 12 (0.62%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.52%) HDFS
16 10 (0.52%) zsh
17 8 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 434 (22.58%) Kubernetes
2 365 (18.99%) Terraform
3 359 (18.68%) Ansible
4 196 (10.20%) Grafana
5 184 (9.57%) Prometheus
6 65 (3.38%) Progress Chef
6 65 (3.38%) Puppet
7 39 (2.03%) Packer
8 37 (1.93%) Argo
9 35 (1.82%) Kibana
10 34 (1.77%) vCenter Server
11 31 (1.61%) SCOM
12 27 (1.40%) ITRS Geneos
13 26 (1.35%) Nessus
13 26 (1.35%) Red Hat Satellite
14 25 (1.30%) Data Guard
15 24 (1.25%) NetBackup
15 24 (1.25%) Podman
16 23 (1.20%) SCCM
16 23 (1.20%) vRealize
Vendors
1 287 (14.93%) Microsoft
2 280 (14.57%) Oracle
3 268 (13.94%) VMware
4 228 (11.86%) Red Hat
5 219 (11.39%) Splunk
6 109 (5.67%) Cisco
7 82 (4.27%) ServiceNow
8 69 (3.59%) IBM
9 60 (3.12%) Google
10 54 (2.81%) AppDynamics
11 46 (2.39%) CyberArk
12 45 (2.34%) Sybase
13 37 (1.93%) Solace
14 36 (1.87%) Citrix
14 36 (1.87%) CrowdStrike
15 34 (1.77%) SAP
16 33 (1.72%) Dell
17 31 (1.61%) F5
18 28 (1.46%) Dynatrace
19 27 (1.40%) HP