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 4 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 57 34 30
Rank change year-on-year -23 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Linux 2,063 1,824 2,154
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.85% 5.65% 5.66%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.33% 41.81% 40.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,286 1,116 1,348
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £426 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -4.02%
75th Percentile £615 £626 £638
90th Percentile £716 £721 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 63 113
10th Percentile £43.81 £41.25 £51.25
25th Percentile £53.68 £53.90 £65.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% +12.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.25 £68.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -3.70% +8.00%

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 5,246 4,363 5,368
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.50% 14.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,323 2,781 3,503
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £582
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 264 293
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.77 £13.85
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.74 £18.27
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -37.13% -9.03%
75th Percentile £65.22 £58.70 £67.50
90th Percentile £74.46 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +6.00% -48.67% +22.00%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 September 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 1,721 £525 - 2,408
UK excluding London -20 1,174 £500 - 1,185
London -42 672 £539 -6.35% 1,403
Work from Home -31 547 £500 -3.85% 834
South East -9 330 £519 +3.75% 346
North of England -27 284 £500 +5.04% 191
South West +2 189 £575 - 193
North West -16 144 £500 +25.00% 114
Scotland -16 135 £450 -10.00% 80
Yorkshire -28 120 £508 +1.40% 42
Midlands -45 119 £471 -5.75% 104
East of England -16 98 £475 -5.00% 237
West Midlands -43 98 £470 -6.00% 60
Wales +1 27 £465 +3.33% 9
North East -16 27 £470 -18.26% 36
East Midlands -14 18 £500 +19.05% 43
Northern Ireland -4 2 - - 48

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 65 (3.15%) Confluence
2 48 (2.33%) Apache
3 30 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (1.41%) nginx
5 23 (1.11%) OpenStack
6 22 (1.07%) Apache Spark
6 22 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
7 20 (0.97%) SharePoint
8 18 (0.87%) SAS
8 18 (0.87%) WebLogic
9 16 (0.78%) Tomcat
10 14 (0.68%) JBoss
11 13 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 13 (0.63%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.44%) IIS
13 6 (0.29%) CMS
13 6 (0.29%) MTS
14 5 (0.24%) Apache Solr
14 5 (0.24%) NetWeaver
14 5 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 28 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.15%) Houdini
4 3 (0.15%) NUKE
4 3 (0.15%) Simulink
5 2 (0.097%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.097%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.048%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.048%) CINEMA 4D
6 1 (0.048%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 1 (0.048%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.048%) Weka
Business Applications
1 7 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
1 7 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.19%) Actimize
4 3 (0.15%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.15%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.097%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.048%) Bloomberg TOMS
6 1 (0.048%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.048%) Magento
6 1 (0.048%) Odoo
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.048%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.048%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.048%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.048%) SunGard Martini
6 1 (0.048%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 596 (28.89%) AWS
2 512 (24.82%) Azure
3 175 (8.48%) GCP
4 162 (7.85%) GitHub
5 105 (5.09%) Entra ID
6 100 (4.85%) GitHub Actions
6 100 (4.85%) OpenShift
7 92 (4.46%) Azure DevOps
8 90 (4.36%) Amazon S3
9 80 (3.88%) Amazon EC2
10 68 (3.30%) Serverless
11 63 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
12 60 (2.91%) AWS Lambda
13 59 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
14 58 (2.81%) AWS CloudFormation
15 56 (2.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 51 (2.47%) IaaS
16 51 (2.47%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 41 (1.99%) Datadog
17 41 (1.99%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 227 (11.00%) DNS
2 221 (10.71%) Firewall
3 143 (6.93%) TCP/IP
4 127 (6.16%) DHCP
5 86 (4.17%) VPN
6 79 (3.83%) SAN
7 78 (3.78%) Network Security
8 50 (2.42%) SSL
9 49 (2.38%) WAN
10 44 (2.13%) SSH
11 42 (2.04%) VSAN
12 40 (1.94%) HTTP
12 40 (1.94%) VLAN
13 35 (1.70%) LAN
14 27 (1.31%) SNMP
15 26 (1.26%) Kerberos
16 24 (1.16%) NAS
17 23 (1.11%) HTTPS
18 21 (1.02%) BGP
19 19 (0.92%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 117 (5.67%) PostgreSQL
2 116 (5.62%) SQL Server
3 99 (4.80%) Oracle Database
4 66 (3.20%) Relational Database
5 65 (3.15%) MySQL
6 52 (2.52%) MongoDB
7 51 (2.47%) Amazon RDS
8 43 (2.08%) NoSQL
9 36 (1.75%) Amazon Aurora
10 34 (1.65%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (1.60%) Data Warehouse
12 29 (1.41%) RDBMS
13 26 (1.26%) Big Data
14 21 (1.02%) Data Lake
15 20 (0.97%) DynamoDB
16 19 (0.92%) Power BI
17 17 (0.82%) Oracle Database 12c
17 17 (0.82%) Redis
18 16 (0.78%) Hadoop
18 16 (0.78%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 252 (12.22%) Git
2 234 (11.34%) Jenkins
3 200 (9.69%) GitLab
4 155 (7.51%) JIRA
5 31 (1.50%) Bitbucket
5 31 (1.50%) Maven
5 31 (1.50%) SonarQube
6 27 (1.31%) Sonatype Nexus
7 20 (0.97%) Mockito
8 19 (0.92%) Selenium
9 18 (0.87%) Artifactory
10 15 (0.73%) JUnit
11 12 (0.58%) Rational Rhapsody
12 11 (0.53%) Eclipse
12 11 (0.53%) Gradle
13 10 (0.48%) TeamCity
14 9 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 9 (0.44%) JMeter
14 9 (0.44%) LoadRunner
15 8 (0.39%) eggPlant
General
1 436 (21.13%) Social Skills
2 306 (14.83%) Finance
3 246 (11.92%) Analytical Skills
4 168 (8.14%) Public Sector
5 161 (7.80%) Banking
6 85 (4.12%) Documentation Skills
7 46 (2.23%) Telecoms
8 38 (1.84%) Front Office
9 37 (1.79%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.26%) Aerospace
10 26 (1.26%) Legal
10 26 (1.26%) Military
11 21 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 19 (0.92%) Retail
13 18 (0.87%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.82%) Law
15 12 (0.58%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
16 10 (0.48%) Aviation
16 10 (0.48%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 310 (15.03%) Senior
2 239 (11.59%) Linux Engineer
3 200 (9.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 187 (9.06%) Developer
5 177 (8.58%) DevOps Engineer
6 108 (5.24%) Architect
7 99 (4.80%) Software Engineer
8 96 (4.65%) Platform Engineer
9 83 (4.02%) Consultant
10 78 (3.78%) Support Engineer
11 77 (3.73%) Lead
12 76 (3.68%) Cloud Engineer
13 72 (3.49%) Analyst
14 69 (3.34%) Administrator
15 67 (3.25%) Java Developer
16 63 (3.05%) AWS Engineer
16 63 (3.05%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
17 59 (2.86%) Systems Engineer
18 54 (2.62%) Senior Developer
19 52 (2.52%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 483 (23.41%) Terraform
2 127 (6.16%) Kafka
3 113 (5.48%) REST
4 71 (3.44%) Elastic Stack
4 71 (3.44%) Middleware
5 66 (3.20%) .NET
6 53 (2.57%) RESTful
7 48 (2.33%) Spring
8 44 (2.13%) Spring Boot
9 38 (1.84%) LDAP
10 37 (1.79%) Web Services
11 36 (1.75%) JSON
12 34 (1.65%) XML
13 30 (1.45%) HTML
13 30 (1.45%) SOAP
14 29 (1.41%) YAML
15 26 (1.26%) ARM Templates
15 26 (1.26%) Django
16 25 (1.21%) Flask
16 25 (1.21%) React
Miscellaneous
1 145 (7.03%) Onboarding
2 138 (6.69%) Cloud Native
3 132 (6.40%) Data Centre
4 105 (5.09%) PKI
5 103 (4.99%) Linux Command Line
6 92 (4.46%) Replication
7 83 (4.02%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (3.44%) Hybrid Cloud
9 66 (3.20%) Public Cloud
10 60 (2.91%) Management Information System
11 44 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
11 44 (2.13%) Security Posture
12 39 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
13 38 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
13 38 (1.84%) Embedded Systems
13 38 (1.84%) Private Cloud
14 36 (1.75%) Clustering
14 36 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
15 35 (1.70%) Operational Technology
16 32 (1.55%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 772 (37.42%) Windows
2 431 (20.89%) Unix
3 356 (17.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 248 (12.02%) Windows Server
5 111 (5.38%) Ubuntu
6 60 (2.91%) AIX
7 54 (2.62%) CentOS
8 52 (2.52%) Solaris
9 39 (1.89%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.36%) VMS
11 27 (1.31%) SUSE
11 27 (1.31%) Windows 10
12 22 (1.07%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (1.02%) Rocky
14 19 (0.92%) Windows Server 2016
15 18 (0.87%) Oracle Linux
16 16 (0.78%) Debian
16 16 (0.78%) Mac OS
17 12 (0.58%) Android
17 12 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 601 (29.13%) CI/CD
2 529 (25.64%) DevOps
3 423 (20.50%) Infrastructure as Code
4 367 (17.79%) Agile
5 319 (15.46%) Problem-Solving
6 294 (14.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 273 (13.23%) Containerisation
8 247 (11.97%) Continuous Improvement
9 230 (11.15%) Migration
10 228 (11.05%) Observability
11 217 (10.52%) Platform Engineering
12 202 (9.79%) High Availability
13 199 (9.65%) Root Cause Analysis
14 198 (9.60%) Software Engineering
15 175 (8.48%) Performance Tuning
16 173 (8.39%) ITIL
17 162 (7.85%) Configuration Management
18 159 (7.71%) Test Automation
19 152 (7.37%) AI
20 150 (7.27%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 746 (36.16%) Python
2 412 (19.97%) Bash
3 400 (19.39%) PowerShell
4 371 (17.98%) SQL
5 239 (11.59%) Java
6 153 (7.42%) Shell Script
7 121 (5.87%) C++
8 75 (3.64%) Perl
9 74 (3.59%) C
10 71 (3.44%) JavaScript
11 68 (3.30%) C#
12 62 (3.01%) PL/SQL
13 51 (2.47%) Go
14 43 (2.08%) Bicep
15 25 (1.21%) Groovy
16 23 (1.11%) Search Processing Language
17 18 (0.87%) Ada
18 16 (0.78%) Rust
18 16 (0.78%) TypeScript
19 14 (0.68%) Korn
Qualifications
1 793 (38.44%) Security Cleared
2 578 (28.02%) SC Cleared
3 245 (11.88%) DV Cleared
4 179 (8.68%) Degree
5 70 (3.39%) AWS Certification
6 58 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 56 (2.71%) Azure Certification
9 55 (2.67%) CISSP
10 53 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
11 22 (1.07%) CCNP
11 22 (1.07%) RHCE
12 21 (1.02%) CISM
12 21 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
13 18 (0.87%) CCNA
13 18 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 17 (0.82%) ISTQB
15 16 (0.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 16 (0.78%) CompTIA Security+
16 14 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (3.49%) NIST
2 70 (3.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 64 (3.10%) QA
4 32 (1.55%) SLA
5 26 (1.26%) Data Quality
6 21 (1.02%) NCSC
7 19 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
8 18 (0.87%) GDPR
9 16 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.78%) ISO 20022
10 10 (0.48%) GRC
10 10 (0.48%) PCI DSS
11 9 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.39%) ISO 15022
12 8 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.34%) ISO 31000
13 7 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 5 (0.24%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.24%) MISRA
15 4 (0.19%) NIST 800
System Software
1 346 (16.77%) Docker
2 276 (13.38%) Active Directory
3 248 (12.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (4.36%) Hyper-V
5 85 (4.12%) vSphere
6 77 (3.73%) Virtual Machines
7 71 (3.44%) VMware ESXi
8 62 (3.01%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.94%) Firmware
10 39 (1.89%) Oracle RAC
11 34 (1.65%) NFS
12 27 (1.31%) KVM
13 17 (0.82%) Ceph
13 17 (0.82%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.68%) Embedded Firmware
14 14 (0.68%) Postfix
15 11 (0.53%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.48%) GPFS
16 10 (0.48%) Squid
17 7 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 458 (22.20%) Ansible
2 444 (21.52%) Kubernetes
3 182 (8.82%) Grafana
4 162 (7.85%) Prometheus
5 86 (4.17%) Puppet
6 61 (2.96%) Progress Chef
7 49 (2.38%) Oracle RMAN
8 44 (2.13%) SCCM
9 39 (1.89%) Data Guard
9 39 (1.89%) vCenter Server
10 30 (1.45%) Nagios
11 29 (1.41%) Kibana
12 28 (1.36%) Microsoft Intune
13 27 (1.31%) Red Hat Satellite
14 26 (1.26%) Podman
15 25 (1.21%) Packer
16 24 (1.16%) NetBackup
17 23 (1.11%) ZABBIX
18 22 (1.07%) VxRail
19 20 (0.97%) Istio
Vendors
1 349 (16.92%) VMware
2 328 (15.90%) Microsoft
3 308 (14.93%) Oracle
4 224 (10.86%) Red Hat
5 163 (7.90%) Splunk
6 121 (5.87%) Cisco
7 112 (5.43%) ServiceNow
8 93 (4.51%) IBM
9 78 (3.78%) CyberArk
9 78 (3.78%) Google
10 48 (2.33%) SolarWinds
11 45 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
11 45 (2.18%) NetApp
12 41 (1.99%) SAP
13 40 (1.94%) Palo Alto
14 37 (1.79%) F5
15 35 (1.70%) Dell
16 32 (1.55%) Citrix
16 32 (1.55%) Dynatrace
17 31 (1.50%) HP