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 11 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 51 31 33
Rank change year-on-year -20 +2 -7
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,895 1,717 2,235
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.80% 5.85% 5.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.69% 41.88% 38.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,158 1,110 1,462
10th Percentile £343 £375 £340
25th Percentile £413 £432 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £536 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.72% -0.74% -6.09%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £538
% change year-on-year -2.00% -6.98% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 36 123
10th Percentile £35.44 £45.16 £46.40
25th Percentile £43.81 £54.38 £55.63
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - -
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £71.04 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -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 4,775 4,100 5,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.57% 13.96% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,039 2,690 3,912
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £315 £313 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £465 £470
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% -1.12% -5.95%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 194 409
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.15 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.33 £15.50
Median hourly rate £31.00 £21.95 £22.52
Median % change year-on-year +41.23% -2.53% -50.02%
75th Percentile £63.75 £41.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.74 £18.87 £24.18
% change year-on-year +52.31% -21.96% -40.43%

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 11 June 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 11 June 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 11 June 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 -28 1,589 £506 -8.00% 705
UK excluding London -16 1,133 £490 -2.00% 570
London -52 553 £525 -8.70% 195
Work from Home -37 482 £500 -3.85% 309
South East -5 304 £513 -2.38% 202
North of England -14 294 £475 -9.52% 91
South West -4 164 £538 -10.42% 114
Yorkshire -17 151 £500 -6.98% 18
Midlands -28 146 £474 -5.25% 54
North West -19 129 £467 +1.74% 56
West Midlands -19 125 £469 -6.20% 29
Scotland -26 99 £500 +5.26% 24
East of England -9 94 £475 +0.53% 79
Wales +3 26 £465 -20.65% 13
East Midlands -27 18 £530 +17.78% 25
North East -23 14 £446 -6.54% 17
Northern Ireland +5 12 £425 +30.77% 6

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 84 (4.43%) Confluence
2 48 (2.53%) Apache
3 31 (1.64%) nginx
4 26 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
5 22 (1.16%) Tomcat
6 20 (1.06%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.95%) WebLogic
8 16 (0.84%) Apache Spark
9 12 (0.63%) SAS
9 12 (0.63%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.58%) CICS
10 11 (0.58%) OpenStack
11 9 (0.47%) NetWeaver
12 8 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.37%) IIS
13 7 (0.37%) JBoss
13 7 (0.37%) SharePoint
14 6 (0.32%) TPMS
14 6 (0.32%) WebSphere Application Server
15 5 (0.26%) CMS
Applications
1 19 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.16%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
6 1 (0.053%) InDesign
6 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.053%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.053%) Weka
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.21%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.16%) Actimize
5 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.11%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.053%) Odoo
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.053%) Shopify
6 1 (0.053%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 536 (28.28%) AWS
2 384 (20.26%) Azure
3 161 (8.50%) GitHub
4 121 (6.39%) GCP
5 106 (5.59%) OpenShift
6 93 (4.91%) GitHub Actions
7 80 (4.22%) Amazon S3
8 78 (4.12%) Amazon EC2
9 68 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
10 66 (3.48%) Amazon EKS
11 60 (3.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 56 (2.96%) Serverless
13 53 (2.80%) Entra ID
14 47 (2.48%) AWS CloudFormation
14 47 (2.48%) AWS Lambda
15 46 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
16 44 (2.32%) IaaS
17 43 (2.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 42 (2.22%) PaaS
19 37 (1.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 185 (9.76%) Firewall
2 147 (7.76%) DNS
3 94 (4.96%) TCP/IP
4 80 (4.22%) VPN
5 66 (3.48%) Network Security
5 66 (3.48%) SAN
6 52 (2.74%) DHCP
7 48 (2.53%) WAN
8 40 (2.11%) LAN
9 39 (2.06%) SSL
10 36 (1.90%) SNMP
11 32 (1.69%) SSH
12 31 (1.64%) VSAN
13 28 (1.48%) HTTP
14 26 (1.37%) NAS
15 23 (1.21%) Ethernet
16 22 (1.16%) VLAN
17 19 (1.00%) BGP
17 19 (1.00%) IPsec
18 17 (0.90%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (6.07%) SQL Server
2 110 (5.80%) PostgreSQL
3 73 (3.85%) Oracle Database
4 71 (3.75%) MySQL
5 63 (3.32%) MongoDB
5 63 (3.32%) Relational Database
6 48 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
7 41 (2.16%) Elasticsearch
8 37 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
9 26 (1.37%) DynamoDB
9 26 (1.37%) NoSQL
10 20 (1.06%) SAP HANA
11 19 (1.00%) Big Data
12 18 (0.95%) Data Warehouse
13 17 (0.90%) Db2
13 17 (0.90%) KDB
14 16 (0.84%) RDBMS
15 14 (0.74%) Kdb+
15 14 (0.74%) Power BI
15 14 (0.74%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 211 (11.13%) Jenkins
2 178 (9.39%) GitLab
3 163 (8.60%) Git
4 149 (7.86%) JIRA
5 31 (1.64%) Maven
6 29 (1.53%) SonarQube
7 26 (1.37%) Mockito
8 22 (1.16%) Eclipse
9 20 (1.06%) JUnit
10 19 (1.00%) Bitbucket
11 18 (0.95%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.84%) Artifactory
13 14 (0.74%) DbUnit
13 14 (0.74%) Rational Rhapsody
13 14 (0.74%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.69%) jMock
15 12 (0.63%) Jaeger
16 11 (0.58%) Bitbucket Server
17 9 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
17 9 (0.47%) Cucumber
General
1 384 (20.26%) Social Skills
2 273 (14.41%) Finance
3 197 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 159 (8.39%) Analytical Skills
5 130 (6.86%) Banking
6 80 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
7 43 (2.27%) Military
8 26 (1.37%) Front Office
9 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.21%) Financial Institution
9 23 (1.21%) Investment Banking
9 23 (1.21%) Law
9 23 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.16%) Retail
11 20 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 17 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (0.90%) Legal
14 15 (0.79%) Manufacturing
15 12 (0.63%) Police
Job Titles
1 248 (13.09%) Senior
2 195 (10.29%) Developer
3 186 (9.82%) Linux Engineer
4 176 (9.29%) DevOps Engineer
5 131 (6.91%) Software Engineer
6 130 (6.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 105 (5.54%) Analyst
8 98 (5.17%) Architect
9 95 (5.01%) Lead
10 74 (3.91%) Java Developer
11 70 (3.69%) AWS Engineer
12 69 (3.64%) Administrator
13 64 (3.38%) Consultant
14 57 (3.01%) Platform Engineer
15 54 (2.85%) Site Reliability Engineer
16 53 (2.80%) Security Engineer
17 52 (2.74%) Support Engineer
18 50 (2.64%) AWS DevOps
19 48 (2.53%) Senior Developer
20 47 (2.48%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (4.64%) Kafka
2 80 (4.22%) REST
3 77 (4.06%) Middleware
4 67 (3.54%) Elastic Stack
5 52 (2.74%) Spring Boot
6 51 (2.69%) Spring
7 49 (2.59%) LDAP
8 46 (2.43%) Web Services
9 44 (2.32%) Node.js
10 43 (2.27%) RESTful
11 40 (2.11%) .NET
12 30 (1.58%) YAML
13 26 (1.37%) AngularJS
13 26 (1.37%) SOAP
14 25 (1.32%) ActiveMQ
14 25 (1.32%) JSON
14 25 (1.32%) XML
15 20 (1.06%) Flash
15 20 (1.06%) React
16 18 (0.95%) Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 152 (8.02%) Data Centre
2 105 (5.54%) Cloud Native
3 82 (4.33%) Onboarding
4 77 (4.06%) Linux Command Line
5 73 (3.85%) Management Information System
6 68 (3.59%) PKI
7 67 (3.54%) Distributed Systems
8 59 (3.11%) Replication
9 49 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
9 49 (2.59%) Public Cloud
10 48 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
11 46 (2.43%) Security Posture
12 36 (1.90%) Product Ownership
13 31 (1.64%) Enterprise Storage
14 30 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
14 30 (1.58%) Security Operations Centre
15 29 (1.53%) Embedded Systems
16 26 (1.37%) Cyber Threat
17 25 (1.32%) Operational Technology
18 24 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 729 (38.47%) Windows
2 381 (20.11%) Unix
3 295 (15.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 187 (9.87%) Windows Server
5 100 (5.28%) Ubuntu
6 57 (3.01%) AIX
7 50 (2.64%) Solaris
8 42 (2.22%) CentOS
9 33 (1.74%) Embedded Linux
10 28 (1.48%) VMS
11 24 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (1.11%) Android
12 21 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (1.00%) Debian
14 18 (0.95%) Mac OS
14 18 (0.95%) SUSE
15 13 (0.69%) Windows 10
16 12 (0.63%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
16 12 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 522 (27.55%) CI/CD
2 454 (23.96%) DevOps
3 356 (18.79%) Agile
4 284 (14.99%) Infrastructure as Code
4 284 (14.99%) Problem-Solving
5 238 (12.56%) Containerisation
6 203 (10.71%) Software Engineering
7 192 (10.13%) Migration
8 188 (9.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 179 (9.45%) Observability
10 158 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
11 155 (8.18%) High Availability
12 153 (8.07%) Performance Tuning
13 151 (7.97%) SIEM
14 146 (7.70%) Root Cause Analysis
15 138 (7.28%) ITIL
16 131 (6.91%) Cybersecurity
17 130 (6.86%) Test Automation
18 127 (6.70%) Computer Science
18 127 (6.70%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 619 (32.66%) Python
2 322 (16.99%) SQL
3 281 (14.83%) PowerShell
4 279 (14.72%) Bash
5 250 (13.19%) Java
6 151 (7.97%) Shell Script
7 121 (6.39%) C++
8 94 (4.96%) JavaScript
9 63 (3.32%) Perl
10 60 (3.17%) C#
11 58 (3.06%) C
12 51 (2.69%) PL/SQL
13 49 (2.59%) Go
14 22 (1.16%) Rust
14 22 (1.16%) TypeScript
15 21 (1.11%) Ada
16 20 (1.06%) MATLAB
17 19 (1.00%) Ruby
17 19 (1.00%) Search Processing Language
18 15 (0.79%) PHP
Qualifications
1 732 (38.63%) Security Cleared
2 544 (28.71%) SC Cleared
3 205 (10.82%) DV Cleared
4 191 (10.08%) Degree
5 69 (3.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 68 (3.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 63 (3.32%) AWS Certification
8 58 (3.06%) CISSP
9 54 (2.85%) Cisco Certification
10 46 (2.43%) CompTIA Security+
11 38 (2.01%) Azure Certification
12 35 (1.85%) RHCE
13 25 (1.32%) CCNP
14 23 (1.21%) CCNA
15 21 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
16 20 (1.06%) CISM
17 19 (1.00%) CompTIA CySA+
18 15 (0.79%) GIAC
18 15 (0.79%) Oracle Certification
19 14 (0.74%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (4.70%) NIST
2 78 (4.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 57 (3.01%) QA
4 49 (2.59%) SLA
5 27 (1.42%) Cyber Essentials
6 25 (1.32%) GDPR
7 22 (1.16%) NCSC
8 17 (0.90%) PCI DSS
9 14 (0.74%) Disclosure Scotland
10 12 (0.63%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 10 (0.53%) Data Quality
12 10 (0.53%) GRC
13 8 (0.42%) SOC 2
14 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.32%) GLBA
15 6 (0.32%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 5 (0.26%) DICOM
16 5 (0.26%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 314 (16.57%) Docker
2 223 (11.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 200 (10.55%) Active Directory
4 78 (4.12%) Virtual Machines
5 66 (3.48%) Hyper-V
5 66 (3.48%) vSphere
6 63 (3.32%) VMware ESXi
7 52 (2.74%) NFS
8 48 (2.53%) VMware NSX
9 38 (2.01%) Firmware
10 31 (1.64%) KVM
11 25 (1.32%) Oracle RAC
12 21 (1.11%) GPFS
12 21 (1.11%) Postfix
13 12 (0.63%) Ceph
13 12 (0.63%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.42%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.42%) Squid
16 7 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 391 (20.63%) Ansible
2 369 (19.47%) Kubernetes
3 350 (18.47%) Terraform
4 171 (9.02%) Grafana
5 142 (7.49%) Prometheus
6 73 (3.85%) Puppet
7 49 (2.59%) Progress Chef
8 41 (2.16%) vCenter Server
9 36 (1.90%) Oracle RMAN
10 29 (1.53%) Podman
10 29 (1.53%) Red Hat Satellite
11 26 (1.37%) Nagios
11 26 (1.37%) Packer
12 24 (1.27%) vRealize
12 24 (1.27%) ZABBIX
13 23 (1.21%) Kibana
14 22 (1.16%) Argo
14 22 (1.16%) Data Guard
14 22 (1.16%) Tivoli
15 20 (1.06%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 300 (15.83%) VMware
2 279 (14.72%) Oracle
3 251 (13.25%) Microsoft
4 223 (11.77%) Red Hat
5 176 (9.29%) Splunk
6 119 (6.28%) Cisco
7 104 (5.49%) IBM
8 87 (4.59%) ServiceNow
9 54 (2.85%) CyberArk
9 54 (2.85%) Palo Alto
10 51 (2.69%) Google
11 38 (2.01%) F5
11 38 (2.01%) SAP
12 37 (1.95%) SolarWinds
13 34 (1.79%) Citrix
13 34 (1.79%) Dell
14 33 (1.74%) BeyondTrust
14 33 (1.74%) HP
14 33 (1.74%) NVIDIA
15 27 (1.42%) Sybase