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 13 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 54 32 33
Rank change year-on-year -22 +1 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,996 1,850 2,286
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.79% 5.66% 5.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.35% 41.71% 38.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,241 1,180 1,471
10th Percentile £350 £367 £340
25th Percentile £414 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -6.52%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £694 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 54 143
10th Percentile £35.18 £41.25 £48.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £54.44 £58.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
75th Percentile £68.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.40 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 5,073 4,435 5,872
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.57% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,238 2,866 3,832
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £315 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +1.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 239 437
10th Percentile £15.78 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.04 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.86
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.46% -41.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £21.28 £31.13
% change year-on-year +24.25% -31.63% +4.97%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 13 July 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 -26 1,681 £518 -3.72% 842
UK excluding London -18 1,191 £500 - 698
London -52 585 £550 -4.76% 264
Work from Home -33 532 £500 -1.23% 369
South East -7 333 £513 -2.38% 202
North of England -15 308 £481 -3.90% 138
South West -4 182 £538 -6.52% 152
Midlands -11 149 £475 - 63
North West -21 149 £480 +19.40% 90
Yorkshire -23 143 £500 -4.76% 28
West Midlands -17 127 £471 -2.84% 35
Scotland -26 103 £463 -5.61% 32
East of England -20 91 £475 -3.06% 83
Wales +4 28 £465 +64.60% 12
North East -19 21 £413 -13.61% 21
East Midlands -11 19 £528 +16.06% 28
Northern Ireland -3 5 - - 27

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 83 (4.16%) Confluence
2 51 (2.56%) Apache
3 33 (1.65%) nginx
4 29 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 27 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (1.10%) Tomcat
7 19 (0.95%) Apache Spark
7 19 (0.95%) WebLogic
8 13 (0.65%) OpenStack
9 11 (0.55%) CICS
9 11 (0.55%) SAS
10 9 (0.45%) NetWeaver
10 9 (0.45%) WebSphere
11 8 (0.40%) IIS
11 8 (0.40%) JBoss
12 6 (0.30%) SharePoint
12 6 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
13 5 (0.25%) CloudStack
13 5 (0.25%) CMS
14 4 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 22 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 4 (0.20%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.050%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.050%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.050%) Houdini
5 1 (0.050%) InDesign
5 1 (0.050%) NUKE
5 1 (0.050%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.050%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.050%) Weka
Business Applications
1 11 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.15%) Actimize
3 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.050%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.050%) Shopify
5 1 (0.050%) SunGard Martini
5 1 (0.050%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 596 (29.86%) AWS
2 424 (21.24%) Azure
3 156 (7.82%) GitHub
4 138 (6.91%) GCP
5 113 (5.66%) OpenShift
6 91 (4.56%) GitHub Actions
7 90 (4.51%) Amazon S3
8 86 (4.31%) Amazon EC2
9 76 (3.81%) Entra ID
10 68 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
11 62 (3.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 59 (2.96%) Amazon EKS
13 57 (2.86%) Serverless
14 51 (2.56%) AWS CloudFormation
15 49 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
16 48 (2.40%) AWS Lambda
17 47 (2.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 46 (2.30%) IaaS
19 41 (2.05%) PaaS
19 41 (2.05%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 188 (9.42%) Firewall
2 162 (8.12%) DNS
3 90 (4.51%) TCP/IP
4 75 (3.76%) SAN
4 75 (3.76%) VPN
5 74 (3.71%) Network Security
6 64 (3.21%) DHCP
7 48 (2.40%) WAN
8 36 (1.80%) LAN
8 36 (1.80%) SSL
9 35 (1.75%) VSAN
10 32 (1.60%) SNMP
11 31 (1.55%) HTTP
12 28 (1.40%) NAS
12 28 (1.40%) SSH
13 26 (1.30%) VLAN
14 24 (1.20%) Ethernet
15 21 (1.05%) IPsec
16 19 (0.95%) BGP
17 18 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 121 (6.06%) SQL Server
2 117 (5.86%) PostgreSQL
3 85 (4.26%) Oracle Database
4 75 (3.76%) MySQL
5 72 (3.61%) Relational Database
6 67 (3.36%) MongoDB
7 56 (2.81%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.15%) Elasticsearch
9 39 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 29 (1.45%) DynamoDB
10 29 (1.45%) RDBMS
11 27 (1.35%) NoSQL
12 22 (1.10%) Big Data
13 20 (1.00%) SAP HANA
14 19 (0.95%) KDB
15 17 (0.85%) Sybase ASE
16 16 (0.80%) DataStage
16 16 (0.80%) Oracle Database 12c
17 15 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
17 15 (0.75%) Db2
Development Applications
1 214 (10.72%) Jenkins
2 193 (9.67%) GitLab
3 173 (8.67%) Git
4 151 (7.57%) JIRA
5 34 (1.70%) Maven
6 31 (1.55%) Mockito
6 31 (1.55%) SonarQube
7 23 (1.15%) Bitbucket
8 21 (1.05%) Eclipse
8 21 (1.05%) Sonatype Nexus
9 18 (0.90%) Artifactory
10 17 (0.85%) JUnit
11 15 (0.75%) Visual Studio
12 14 (0.70%) DbUnit
12 14 (0.70%) Rational Rhapsody
13 13 (0.65%) jMock
14 11 (0.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 11 (0.55%) Bitbucket Server
15 9 (0.45%) Cucumber
16 8 (0.40%) Liquibase
General
1 400 (20.04%) Social Skills
2 282 (14.13%) Finance
3 209 (10.47%) Public Sector
4 172 (8.62%) Analytical Skills
5 136 (6.81%) Banking
6 74 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
7 37 (1.85%) Military
8 29 (1.45%) Front Office
9 27 (1.35%) Investment Banking
9 27 (1.35%) Telecoms
10 26 (1.30%) Retail
11 24 (1.20%) Legal
12 22 (1.10%) Law
13 20 (1.00%) Financial Institution
14 19 (0.95%) Aerospace
14 19 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 18 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
15 18 (0.90%) Manufacturing
16 17 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
17 10 (0.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 261 (13.08%) Senior
2 207 (10.37%) Developer
3 196 (9.82%) Linux Engineer
4 194 (9.72%) DevOps Engineer
5 158 (7.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 122 (6.11%) Software Engineer
7 99 (4.96%) Architect
8 97 (4.86%) Analyst
9 85 (4.26%) Lead
10 78 (3.91%) Java Developer
11 73 (3.66%) Platform Engineer
12 67 (3.36%) AWS Engineer
12 67 (3.36%) Consultant
13 62 (3.11%) Support Engineer
14 59 (2.96%) Cloud Engineer
14 59 (2.96%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 55 (2.76%) Administrator
16 52 (2.61%) Security Engineer
17 51 (2.56%) Senior Developer
17 51 (2.56%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (4.91%) Kafka
2 94 (4.71%) REST
3 75 (3.76%) Middleware
4 74 (3.71%) Elastic Stack
5 56 (2.81%) Spring
6 50 (2.51%) Spring Boot
7 48 (2.40%) LDAP
8 47 (2.35%) Web Services
9 43 (2.15%) Node.js
9 43 (2.15%) RESTful
10 41 (2.05%) .NET
11 31 (1.55%) ActiveMQ
12 27 (1.35%) JSON
12 27 (1.35%) SOAP
12 27 (1.35%) YAML
13 26 (1.30%) AngularJS
14 25 (1.25%) React
15 24 (1.20%) XML
16 20 (1.00%) Keycloak
17 19 (0.95%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 138 (6.91%) Data Centre
2 129 (6.46%) Cloud Native
3 103 (5.16%) Onboarding
4 93 (4.66%) Linux Command Line
5 82 (4.11%) PKI
6 79 (3.96%) Distributed Systems
7 70 (3.51%) Replication
8 60 (3.01%) Management Information System
9 58 (2.91%) Public Cloud
10 55 (2.76%) Security Posture
11 54 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
12 50 (2.51%) Hybrid Cloud
13 36 (1.80%) Product Ownership
14 30 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
15 27 (1.35%) Embedded Systems
15 27 (1.35%) Enterprise Storage
15 27 (1.35%) Operational Technology
16 26 (1.30%) Clustering
16 26 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
17 25 (1.25%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 752 (37.68%) Windows
2 410 (20.54%) Unix
3 322 (16.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 193 (9.67%) Windows Server
5 102 (5.11%) Ubuntu
6 70 (3.51%) AIX
7 59 (2.96%) Solaris
8 40 (2.00%) CentOS
9 29 (1.45%) Embedded Linux
9 29 (1.45%) VMS
10 24 (1.20%) SUSE
10 24 (1.20%) Windows Server 2019
11 18 (0.90%) Android
12 16 (0.80%) Mac OS
13 15 (0.75%) Mac OS X
13 15 (0.75%) Oracle Linux
13 15 (0.75%) Windows 10
13 15 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.70%) Debian
15 13 (0.65%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (28.26%) CI/CD
2 483 (24.20%) DevOps
3 364 (18.24%) Agile
4 339 (16.98%) Infrastructure as Code
5 300 (15.03%) Problem-Solving
6 275 (13.78%) Containerisation
7 225 (11.27%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 216 (10.82%) Migration
9 206 (10.32%) Software Engineering
10 185 (9.27%) Observability
11 184 (9.22%) Continuous Improvement
12 182 (9.12%) High Availability
13 164 (8.22%) Performance Tuning
14 161 (8.07%) Root Cause Analysis
15 155 (7.77%) ITIL
15 155 (7.77%) Platform Engineering
16 150 (7.52%) SIEM
17 136 (6.81%) Microservices
18 135 (6.76%) Test Automation
19 134 (6.71%) AI
Programming Languages
1 675 (33.82%) Python
2 330 (16.53%) SQL
3 326 (16.33%) Bash
4 314 (15.73%) PowerShell
5 247 (12.37%) Java
6 142 (7.11%) Shell Script
7 122 (6.11%) C++
8 87 (4.36%) JavaScript
9 67 (3.36%) C
10 61 (3.06%) C#
11 58 (2.91%) PL/SQL
12 54 (2.71%) Perl
13 50 (2.51%) Go
14 25 (1.25%) Ada
15 22 (1.10%) TypeScript
16 21 (1.05%) Rust
16 21 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.90%) Bicep
18 16 (0.80%) PHP
19 14 (0.70%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 780 (39.08%) Security Cleared
2 581 (29.11%) SC Cleared
3 223 (11.17%) DV Cleared
4 177 (8.87%) Degree
5 70 (3.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 69 (3.46%) AWS Certification
7 56 (2.81%) Cisco Certification
7 56 (2.81%) CISSP
8 52 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
9 43 (2.15%) Azure Certification
10 33 (1.65%) CompTIA Security+
11 28 (1.40%) RHCE
12 26 (1.30%) CCNA
13 24 (1.20%) CCNP
14 20 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
15 18 (0.90%) CISM
16 16 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 16 (0.80%) GIAC
17 14 (0.70%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 13 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (4.26%) NIST
2 82 (4.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 58 (2.91%) QA
4 38 (1.90%) SLA
5 25 (1.25%) NCSC
6 21 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.00%) Disclosure Scotland
7 20 (1.00%) GDPR
8 16 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.70%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.60%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.55%) GRC
12 10 (0.50%) SOC 2
13 9 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.35%) ISO 20022
14 7 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.30%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 4 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 4 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 338 (16.93%) Docker
2 237 (11.87%) Active Directory
3 232 (11.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (4.71%) Virtual Machines
5 72 (3.61%) Hyper-V
5 72 (3.61%) VMware ESXi
6 70 (3.51%) vSphere
7 55 (2.76%) VMware NSX
8 49 (2.45%) NFS
9 36 (1.80%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (1.75%) Firmware
11 32 (1.60%) KVM
12 21 (1.05%) Postfix
13 17 (0.85%) GPFS
14 12 (0.60%) Ceph
15 11 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.45%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.35%) BitLocker
17 7 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
17 7 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 419 (20.99%) Ansible
2 411 (20.59%) Terraform
3 410 (20.54%) Kubernetes
4 174 (8.72%) Grafana
5 152 (7.62%) Prometheus
6 71 (3.56%) Puppet
7 55 (2.76%) Progress Chef
8 48 (2.40%) Oracle RMAN
9 47 (2.35%) vCenter Server
10 33 (1.65%) Data Guard
11 30 (1.50%) Packer
12 28 (1.40%) Nagios
13 26 (1.30%) Red Hat Satellite
13 26 (1.30%) ZABBIX
14 22 (1.10%) Argo
14 22 (1.10%) Tivoli
14 22 (1.10%) vRealize
15 21 (1.05%) Kibana
16 19 (0.95%) Podman
16 19 (0.95%) SCCM
Vendors
1 313 (15.68%) VMware
2 289 (14.48%) Oracle
3 275 (13.78%) Microsoft
4 221 (11.07%) Red Hat
5 163 (8.17%) Splunk
6 126 (6.31%) Cisco
7 110 (5.51%) IBM
8 94 (4.71%) ServiceNow
9 72 (3.61%) CyberArk
10 66 (3.31%) Google
11 48 (2.40%) Palo Alto
12 45 (2.25%) SolarWinds
13 44 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
14 40 (2.00%) SAP
15 38 (1.90%) F5
16 35 (1.75%) HP
16 35 (1.75%) NetApp
17 34 (1.70%) Citrix
18 30 (1.50%) Sybase
19 28 (1.40%) Tenable