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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 44 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -12 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,951 1,768 2,452
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.81% 5.76% 5.53%
As % of the Operating Systems category 40.27% 40.05% 39.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,229 1,068 1,604
10th Percentile £318 £356 £325
25th Percentile £400 £431 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £651 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -8.76% - -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 53 125
10th Percentile £12.75 £42.00 £28.25
25th Percentile £41.25 £59.39 £48.32
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +6.56% -6.15%
75th Percentile £67.88 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.50 £74.25 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £66.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year -6.02% +7.26% -4.62%

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 4,845 4,414 6,192
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.95% 14.39% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,205 2,765 4,139
10th Percentile £178 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £470 £465
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% +1.08% -9.71%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £409 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -3.87% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 150 390
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £17.05
Median hourly rate £23.00 £29.00 £25.52
Median % change year-on-year -20.69% +13.64% -1.85%
75th Percentile £53.75 £64.69 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.99 £70.10 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £25.25
% change year-on-year -18.18% +8.91% -2.88%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -13 1,682 £512 -6.95% 813
UK excluding London -4 1,111 £479 -8.76% 771
London -21 634 £550 -8.33% 193
Work from Home -20 519 £492 -6.29% 368
South East -1 316 £475 -7.09% 205
North of England -3 301 £478 -13.09% 149
Midlands -5 187 £525 -0.47% 103
Yorkshire 0 174 £495 -13.91% 40
West Midlands +2 173 £525 -4.72% 69
South West -19 133 £550 -8.33% 121
North West -11 119 £469 -6.20% 88
Scotland -16 91 £425 -9.09% 102
East of England -14 84 £473 +5.00% 78
Northern Ireland +10 18 £400 +23.08% 7
East Midlands -29 14 £420 -12.41% 33
North East -16 13 £550 +16.83% 22
Wales -9 6 £571 +6.28% 16

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 86 (4.41%) Confluence
2 53 (2.72%) Apache
3 49 (2.51%) nginx
4 40 (2.05%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.18%) Apache Spark
6 19 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
6 19 (0.97%) OpenStack
7 18 (0.92%) WebLogic
8 15 (0.77%) SharePoint
8 15 (0.77%) WebSphere
9 13 (0.67%) JBoss
9 13 (0.67%) TPMS
10 12 (0.62%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.56%) Mattermost
11 11 (0.56%) Tomcat
12 10 (0.51%) SAS
13 7 (0.36%) IIS
13 7 (0.36%) iPlanet
13 7 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
14 6 (0.31%) CICS
Applications
1 53 (2.72%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.31%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.10%) Windchill
7 1 (0.051%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.051%) OmniGraffle
7 1 (0.051%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.051%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 5 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
1 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.10%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.10%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.051%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.051%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.051%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.051%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.051%) RMDS
5 1 (0.051%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.051%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 590 (30.24%) AWS
2 372 (19.07%) Azure
3 189 (9.69%) GitHub
4 147 (7.53%) GCP
5 135 (6.92%) OpenShift
6 114 (5.84%) Serverless
7 113 (5.79%) AWS CloudFormation
8 98 (5.02%) Amazon EC2
9 93 (4.77%) GitHub Actions
10 81 (4.15%) Amazon S3
11 73 (3.74%) Amazon EKS
12 68 (3.49%) Amazon ECS
12 68 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
13 61 (3.13%) Azure DevOps
14 56 (2.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 50 (2.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 48 (2.46%) IaaS
17 40 (2.05%) Entra ID
17 40 (2.05%) SaaS
18 39 (2.00%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 211 (10.81%) Firewall
2 156 (8.00%) DNS
3 132 (6.77%) TCP/IP
4 69 (3.54%) Network Security
5 64 (3.28%) VPN
6 48 (2.46%) SSH
7 46 (2.36%) SSL
8 45 (2.31%) DHCP
9 42 (2.15%) HTTP
10 36 (1.85%) SAN
11 32 (1.64%) VLAN
12 31 (1.59%) Wireless
13 28 (1.44%) WAN
14 24 (1.23%) BGP
14 24 (1.23%) Kerberos
15 23 (1.18%) VSAN
16 21 (1.08%) Ethernet
17 20 (1.03%) SNMP
17 20 (1.03%) Wireshark
18 19 (0.97%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 146 (7.48%) PostgreSQL
2 98 (5.02%) SQL Server
3 91 (4.66%) Relational Database
4 84 (4.31%) Amazon RDS
5 82 (4.20%) MongoDB
6 74 (3.79%) NoSQL
7 71 (3.64%) MySQL
8 65 (3.33%) Oracle Database
9 55 (2.82%) Elasticsearch
10 31 (1.59%) DB2
11 24 (1.23%) Big Data
12 22 (1.13%) Hadoop
13 20 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
14 18 (0.92%) KDB
14 18 (0.92%) Kdb+
15 16 (0.82%) Data Lake
16 14 (0.72%) Apache Hive
16 14 (0.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 13 (0.67%) Apache Cassandra
18 12 (0.62%) HBase
Development Applications
1 268 (13.74%) Jenkins
2 218 (11.17%) Git
3 203 (10.40%) GitLab
4 137 (7.02%) JIRA
5 52 (2.67%) JUnit
6 49 (2.51%) Sonatype Nexus
7 42 (2.15%) Bitbucket
8 31 (1.59%) Eclipse
8 31 (1.59%) Maven
9 29 (1.49%) Mockito
10 25 (1.28%) Cucumber
11 21 (1.08%) Liquibase
12 18 (0.92%) Burp Suite
13 17 (0.87%) Artifactory
14 16 (0.82%) Browser DevTools
14 16 (0.82%) JMeter
15 15 (0.77%) Android Studio
15 15 (0.77%) Metasploit
15 15 (0.77%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.77%) Xcode
General
1 521 (26.70%) Social Skills
2 337 (17.27%) Finance
3 196 (10.05%) Public Sector
4 192 (9.84%) Analytical Skills
5 141 (7.23%) Banking
6 70 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
7 52 (2.67%) Financial Institution
8 43 (2.20%) Military
9 37 (1.90%) Investment Banking
10 34 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
11 33 (1.69%) Front Office
12 23 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
13 22 (1.13%) Legal
14 18 (0.92%) Aerospace
14 18 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 17 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 14 (0.72%) Law
16 14 (0.72%) Manufacturing
17 13 (0.67%) Retail
Job Titles
1 296 (15.17%) Developer
2 245 (12.56%) Senior
3 181 (9.28%) DevOps Engineer
4 137 (7.02%) Software Engineer
5 129 (6.61%) Analyst
6 115 (5.89%) Java Developer
7 106 (5.43%) Architect
8 96 (4.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 89 (4.56%) Support Engineer
10 85 (4.36%) Linux Engineer
11 83 (4.25%) Platform Engineer
12 82 (4.20%) Lead
13 79 (4.05%) Administrator
14 73 (3.74%) AWS Engineer
15 70 (3.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 67 (3.43%) Site Engineer
17 57 (2.92%) AWS DevOps
18 55 (2.82%) Senior Software Engineer
19 52 (2.67%) Senior Developer
20 51 (2.61%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (8.20%) Kafka
2 127 (6.51%) REST
3 120 (6.15%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.15%) Middleware
5 71 (3.64%) Spring
6 66 (3.38%) Node.js
7 56 (2.87%) LDAP
7 56 (2.87%) RESTful
8 53 (2.72%) React
9 49 (2.51%) JSON
10 47 (2.41%) XML
11 41 (2.10%) AngularJS
12 40 (2.05%) Spring Boot
13 39 (2.00%) SOAP
14 35 (1.79%) YAML
15 32 (1.64%) Web Services
16 28 (1.44%) CSS
17 26 (1.33%) ActiveMQ
17 26 (1.33%) OAuth
18 25 (1.28%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 110 (5.64%) Cloud Native
2 109 (5.59%) Data Centre
3 92 (4.72%) Linux Command Line
4 70 (3.59%) Management Information System
5 68 (3.49%) Distributed Systems
6 57 (2.92%) Public Cloud
7 55 (2.82%) PKI
8 54 (2.77%) Replication
9 50 (2.56%) Equities
10 49 (2.51%) Onboarding
11 41 (2.10%) Security Operations Centre
12 37 (1.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 36 (1.85%) Product Ownership
14 35 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
15 34 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
16 33 (1.69%) Data Structures
16 33 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
17 31 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
18 30 (1.54%) Security Posture
19 29 (1.49%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 710 (36.39%) Windows
2 391 (20.04%) Unix
3 260 (13.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 152 (7.79%) Windows Server
5 84 (4.31%) Ubuntu
6 49 (2.51%) CentOS
7 40 (2.05%) Android
8 35 (1.79%) Solaris
9 30 (1.54%) Mac OS
9 30 (1.54%) Mac OS X
10 28 (1.44%) VMS
11 26 (1.33%) AIX
12 22 (1.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.97%) Windows 10
14 18 (0.92%) Embedded Linux
15 14 (0.72%) Kali Linux
15 14 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.62%) Debian
17 11 (0.56%) Apple iOS
18 10 (0.51%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 593 (30.39%) CI/CD
2 490 (25.12%) DevOps
3 431 (22.09%) Agile
4 387 (19.84%) Problem-Solving
5 315 (16.15%) Infrastructure as Code
6 312 (15.99%) Containerisation
7 240 (12.30%) Software Engineering
8 195 (9.99%) Observability
9 186 (9.53%) Cybersecurity
10 171 (8.76%) Computer Science
11 168 (8.61%) Microservices
12 165 (8.46%) Continuous Improvement
13 162 (8.30%) Test Automation
14 155 (7.94%) Incident Response
15 152 (7.79%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 137 (7.02%) Platform Engineering
17 128 (6.56%) High Availability
18 125 (6.41%) SIEM
19 124 (6.36%) Site Reliability Engineering
20 120 (6.15%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 741 (37.98%) Python
2 361 (18.50%) Java
3 342 (17.53%) SQL
4 332 (17.02%) Bash
5 270 (13.84%) PowerShell
6 209 (10.71%) Shell Script
7 171 (8.76%) C++
8 130 (6.66%) JavaScript
9 110 (5.64%) Perl
10 77 (3.95%) C#
11 69 (3.54%) Go
12 56 (2.87%) C
13 43 (2.20%) Ruby
14 33 (1.69%) Rust
14 33 (1.69%) TypeScript
15 28 (1.44%) PL/SQL
16 25 (1.28%) PHP
17 22 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
18 18 (0.92%) Ada
18 18 (0.92%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 691 (35.42%) Security Cleared
2 494 (25.32%) SC Cleared
3 214 (10.97%) Degree
4 171 (8.76%) DV Cleared
5 113 (5.79%) Computer Science Degree
6 89 (4.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 68 (3.49%) AWS Certification
8 39 (2.00%) CISSP
9 38 (1.95%) CompTIA Security+
10 37 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
11 34 (1.74%) Master's Degree
12 31 (1.59%) Azure Certification
12 31 (1.59%) Microsoft Certification
13 27 (1.38%) RHCE
14 22 (1.13%) CCNA
15 21 (1.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 21 (1.08%) CCNP
16 19 (0.97%) OSCP
17 17 (0.87%) CEH
17 17 (0.87%) GPEN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (3.64%) NIST
2 53 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 42 (2.15%) GDPR
4 40 (2.05%) QA
5 30 (1.54%) SLA
6 21 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 19 (0.97%) Data Quality
8 18 (0.92%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.77%) NCSC
10 13 (0.67%) GLBA
11 10 (0.51%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (0.46%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 7 (0.36%) Accessibility
15 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
15 6 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 3 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
16 3 (0.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.15%) SEPA
System Software
1 407 (20.86%) Docker
2 225 (11.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 177 (9.07%) Active Directory
4 75 (3.84%) vSphere
5 70 (3.59%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (2.82%) Hyper-V
7 49 (2.51%) VMware ESXi
8 28 (1.44%) GPFS
8 28 (1.44%) NFS
9 25 (1.28%) VMware NSX
10 24 (1.23%) KVM
11 18 (0.92%) Firmware
12 14 (0.72%) Oracle RAC
12 14 (0.72%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 12 (0.62%) HDFS
13 12 (0.62%) Lustre
13 12 (0.62%) Postfix
13 12 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.41%) QEMU
15 7 (0.36%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 483 (24.76%) Kubernetes
2 410 (21.01%) Terraform
3 387 (19.84%) Ansible
4 210 (10.76%) Grafana
5 183 (9.38%) Prometheus
6 74 (3.79%) Puppet
7 63 (3.23%) Progress Chef
8 45 (2.31%) vCenter Server
9 40 (2.05%) Red Hat Satellite
10 35 (1.79%) Argo
10 35 (1.79%) Packer
10 35 (1.79%) vRealize
11 33 (1.69%) Kibana
11 33 (1.69%) Podman
12 28 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
13 26 (1.33%) Nessus
14 25 (1.28%) SCCM
14 25 (1.28%) SCOM
15 19 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
16 18 (0.92%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 311 (15.94%) VMware
2 306 (15.68%) Microsoft
3 260 (13.33%) Oracle
4 247 (12.66%) Splunk
5 227 (11.64%) Red Hat
6 114 (5.84%) Cisco
7 87 (4.46%) IBM
8 77 (3.95%) ServiceNow
9 56 (2.87%) Google
10 45 (2.31%) Dell
11 38 (1.95%) CyberArk
12 34 (1.74%) AppDynamics
12 34 (1.74%) Palo Alto
13 28 (1.44%) SolarWinds
14 25 (1.28%) CrowdStrike
14 25 (1.28%) NetApp
15 24 (1.23%) Citrix
16 23 (1.18%) NVIDIA
17 20 (1.03%) Databricks
17 20 (1.03%) HP