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 9 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 48 32 31
Rank change year-on-year -16 -1 -6
Contract jobs citing Linux 1,883 1,793 2,395
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 4.46% 6.03% 5.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 39.52% 42.23% 39.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,193 1,113 1,579
10th Percentile £323 £368 £313
25th Percentile £400 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +1.85% -7.53%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £537 £525
% change year-on-year -9.68% +2.29% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 58 119
10th Percentile £14.75 £41.03 £26.04
25th Percentile £41.25 £57.04 £48.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.87% +7.44% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.50 £72.38 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £61.00
% change year-on-year -3.85% +6.56% -6.15%

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 4,765 4,246 6,108
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.28% 14.27% 13.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,131 2,757 4,070
10th Percentile £180 £200 £180
25th Percentile £275 £317 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.32% +5.56% -12.37%
75th Percentile £565 £595 £588
90th Percentile £658 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £438 £425
% change year-on-year -5.71% +2.94% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 156 415
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.38 £13.29
25th Percentile £18.12 £19.63 £15.58
Median hourly rate £23.00 £28.71 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.87% +27.58% -15.09%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £24.83 £22.50
% change year-on-year -9.08% +10.36% -13.46%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 9 March 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 -16 1,621 £513 -6.82% 919
UK excluding London -10 1,086 £485 -9.68% 821
London -32 586 £550 -8.33% 179
Work from Home -19 497 £500 -6.54% 430
South East -2 322 £491 -7.53% 250
North of England -6 295 £492 -10.55% 140
Midlands -21 163 £485 -7.62% 92
Yorkshire -12 160 £481 -12.55% 44
West Midlands -11 150 £501 -5.74% 54
South West -22 140 £550 -8.33% 140
North West -4 126 £492 -6.29% 73
Scotland -23 80 £419 -10.43% 65
East of England -24 79 £462 +2.67% 112
Northern Ireland +7 16 £413 +26.92% 10
East Midlands -45 13 £428 -5.94% 37
North East -15 12 £550 +12.82% 23
Wales -10 7 £404 -26.59% 25

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 92 (4.89%) Confluence
2 46 (2.44%) nginx
3 41 (2.18%) Apache
4 40 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.01%) OpenStack
6 16 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 16 (0.85%) WebLogic
7 13 (0.69%) SharePoint
7 13 (0.69%) Tomcat
8 12 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
8 12 (0.64%) TPMS
9 11 (0.58%) WebSphere
10 10 (0.53%) SAS
11 8 (0.42%) CICS
12 7 (0.37%) JBoss
13 6 (0.32%) NetWeaver
13 6 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 4 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
15 3 (0.16%) CMS
Applications
1 49 (2.60%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 6 (0.32%) Weka
5 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.053%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.053%) InDesign
7 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.053%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 9 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.11%) BusinessWorks
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 1 (0.053%) Cloudability
5 1 (0.053%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.053%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.053%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.053%) RMDS
5 1 (0.053%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.053%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 571 (30.32%) AWS
2 359 (19.07%) Azure
3 184 (9.77%) GitHub
4 140 (7.43%) OpenShift
5 130 (6.90%) GCP
6 106 (5.63%) AWS CloudFormation
7 98 (5.20%) Serverless
8 97 (5.15%) Amazon EC2
9 90 (4.78%) GitHub Actions
10 78 (4.14%) Amazon S3
11 74 (3.93%) Amazon EKS
12 64 (3.40%) AWS Lambda
13 63 (3.35%) Azure DevOps
14 62 (3.29%) Amazon ECS
15 56 (2.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 48 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 44 (2.34%) IaaS
18 38 (2.02%) Entra ID
19 36 (1.91%) SaaS
20 33 (1.75%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 205 (10.89%) Firewall
2 132 (7.01%) DNS
3 120 (6.37%) TCP/IP
4 61 (3.24%) Network Security
4 61 (3.24%) VPN
5 45 (2.39%) SAN
6 43 (2.28%) SSH
7 36 (1.91%) DHCP
7 36 (1.91%) HTTP
8 34 (1.81%) WAN
9 33 (1.75%) SSL
10 29 (1.54%) VSAN
11 25 (1.33%) LAN
11 25 (1.33%) Wireless
12 24 (1.27%) Ethernet
13 22 (1.17%) SNMP
14 21 (1.12%) BGP
14 21 (1.12%) VLAN
15 19 (1.01%) Kerberos
16 16 (0.85%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (7.43%) PostgreSQL
2 94 (4.99%) SQL Server
3 79 (4.20%) Amazon RDS
3 79 (4.20%) Relational Database
4 72 (3.82%) MongoDB
5 71 (3.77%) MySQL
6 59 (3.13%) Oracle Database
7 57 (3.03%) NoSQL
8 44 (2.34%) Elasticsearch
9 26 (1.38%) DB2
10 20 (1.06%) Big Data
10 20 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
11 18 (0.96%) KDB
12 17 (0.90%) Kdb+
13 15 (0.80%) Hadoop
14 13 (0.69%) Data Lake
14 13 (0.69%) DynamoDB
15 12 (0.64%) RDBMS
15 12 (0.64%) SAP HANA
16 11 (0.58%) Redis
Development Applications
1 255 (13.54%) Jenkins
2 198 (10.52%) Git
3 196 (10.41%) GitLab
4 148 (7.86%) JIRA
5 51 (2.71%) JUnit
6 42 (2.23%) Bitbucket
6 42 (2.23%) Sonatype Nexus
7 35 (1.86%) Maven
8 34 (1.81%) Eclipse
9 28 (1.49%) Cucumber
10 23 (1.22%) Mockito
11 20 (1.06%) Artifactory
11 20 (1.06%) SonarQube
12 18 (0.96%) JMeter
13 16 (0.85%) Burp Suite
13 16 (0.85%) Visual Studio
14 15 (0.80%) Selenium
15 13 (0.69%) Liquibase
15 13 (0.69%) Metasploit
16 12 (0.64%) Android Studio
General
1 486 (25.81%) Social Skills
2 312 (16.57%) Finance
3 196 (10.41%) Public Sector
4 171 (9.08%) Analytical Skills
5 134 (7.12%) Banking
6 59 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
7 48 (2.55%) Military
8 38 (2.02%) Financial Institution
9 34 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
10 31 (1.65%) Investment Banking
11 26 (1.38%) Front Office
12 25 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
13 20 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
13 20 (1.06%) Legal
14 19 (1.01%) Law
14 19 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 18 (0.96%) Aerospace
16 17 (0.90%) Retail
17 12 (0.64%) Manufacturing
18 10 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 246 (13.06%) Developer
2 231 (12.27%) Senior
3 173 (9.19%) DevOps Engineer
4 137 (7.28%) Software Engineer
5 125 (6.64%) Analyst
6 114 (6.05%) Architect
7 100 (5.31%) Linux Engineer
8 94 (4.99%) Java Developer
9 82 (4.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 82 (4.35%) Lead
10 74 (3.93%) Administrator
10 74 (3.93%) Platform Engineer
11 71 (3.77%) Support Engineer
12 69 (3.66%) AWS Engineer
12 69 (3.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 64 (3.40%) Site Engineer
14 58 (3.08%) AWS DevOps
15 51 (2.71%) Security Engineer
16 47 (2.50%) Senior Software Engineer
17 45 (2.39%) AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 138 (7.33%) Kafka
2 114 (6.05%) REST
3 106 (5.63%) Elastic Stack
4 81 (4.30%) Middleware
5 72 (3.82%) Node.js
6 69 (3.66%) Spring
7 51 (2.71%) LDAP
8 47 (2.50%) RESTful
9 45 (2.39%) JSON
10 43 (2.28%) Spring Boot
10 43 (2.28%) XML
11 42 (2.23%) Web Services
12 41 (2.18%) React
13 36 (1.91%) AngularJS
14 35 (1.86%) YAML
15 33 (1.75%) SOAP
16 28 (1.49%) .NET
17 23 (1.22%) CSS
18 22 (1.17%) Hibernate
19 21 (1.12%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 114 (6.05%) Cloud Native
1 114 (6.05%) Data Centre
2 86 (4.57%) Linux Command Line
3 69 (3.66%) Distributed Systems
4 68 (3.61%) Management Information System
5 60 (3.19%) Public Cloud
6 55 (2.92%) PKI
7 54 (2.87%) Onboarding
8 47 (2.50%) Replication
9 42 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
9 42 (2.23%) Product Ownership
10 40 (2.12%) Equities
11 38 (2.02%) Security Operations Centre
12 36 (1.91%) Security Posture
13 31 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
14 30 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 30 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
15 29 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
16 28 (1.49%) Data Structures
17 27 (1.43%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 693 (36.80%) Windows
2 340 (18.06%) Unix
3 265 (14.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 151 (8.02%) Windows Server
5 94 (4.99%) Ubuntu
6 49 (2.60%) CentOS
7 38 (2.02%) Android
8 33 (1.75%) Solaris
9 32 (1.70%) AIX
10 26 (1.38%) VMS
11 24 (1.27%) Mac OS
11 24 (1.27%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (1.06%) Embedded Linux
13 17 (0.90%) Mac OS X
14 16 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.74%) Kali Linux
15 14 (0.74%) Windows 10
16 13 (0.69%) Debian
17 11 (0.58%) Apple iOS
18 10 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 580 (30.80%) CI/CD
2 477 (25.33%) DevOps
3 426 (22.62%) Agile
4 344 (18.27%) Problem-Solving
5 305 (16.20%) Infrastructure as Code
6 302 (16.04%) Containerisation
7 229 (12.16%) Software Engineering
8 193 (10.25%) Observability
9 163 (8.66%) Continuous Improvement
10 160 (8.50%) Cybersecurity
11 153 (8.13%) Computer Science
11 153 (8.13%) Microservices
12 150 (7.97%) Test Automation
13 144 (7.65%) Incident Response
14 141 (7.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 135 (7.17%) Migration
16 129 (6.85%) Platform Engineering
17 128 (6.80%) High Availability
18 125 (6.64%) Site Reliability Engineering
19 122 (6.48%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 685 (36.38%) Python
2 333 (17.68%) Java
3 319 (16.94%) SQL
4 317 (16.83%) Bash
5 266 (14.13%) PowerShell
6 185 (9.82%) Shell Script
7 163 (8.66%) C++
8 128 (6.80%) JavaScript
9 100 (5.31%) Perl
10 76 (4.04%) C#
11 57 (3.03%) Go
12 53 (2.81%) C
13 42 (2.23%) Ruby
14 34 (1.81%) TypeScript
15 31 (1.65%) PL/SQL
16 28 (1.49%) Rust
17 24 (1.27%) PHP
18 22 (1.17%) Ada
19 20 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
20 15 (0.80%) Korn
Qualifications
1 703 (37.33%) Security Cleared
2 505 (26.82%) SC Cleared
3 193 (10.25%) Degree
4 168 (8.92%) DV Cleared
5 96 (5.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 89 (4.73%) BPSS Clearance
7 64 (3.40%) AWS Certification
8 40 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
8 40 (2.12%) CompTIA Security+
9 39 (2.07%) CISSP
10 29 (1.54%) Master's Degree
10 29 (1.54%) RHCE
11 26 (1.38%) CCNA
12 25 (1.33%) Azure Certification
13 22 (1.17%) CCNP
13 22 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
14 21 (1.12%) Oracle Certification
15 20 (1.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 17 (0.90%) CompTIA CySA+
16 17 (0.90%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (3.88%) NIST
2 50 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 48 (2.55%) GDPR
4 46 (2.44%) QA
5 31 (1.65%) SLA
6 23 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
7 20 (1.06%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.90%) NCSC
9 12 (0.64%) GLBA
9 12 (0.64%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.58%) Data Quality
11 9 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.37%) Accessibility
13 7 (0.37%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 4 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
15 4 (0.21%) GRC
16 3 (0.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 395 (20.98%) Docker
2 221 (11.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 158 (8.39%) Active Directory
4 82 (4.35%) vSphere
5 70 (3.72%) Virtual Machines
6 52 (2.76%) Hyper-V
7 48 (2.55%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (1.70%) NFS
9 28 (1.49%) GPFS
10 27 (1.43%) VMware NSX
11 22 (1.17%) Firmware
11 22 (1.17%) KVM
12 16 (0.85%) Oracle RAC
13 14 (0.74%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 13 (0.69%) Postfix
15 12 (0.64%) Lustre
16 8 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.37%) Ceph
17 7 (0.37%) QEMU
18 6 (0.32%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 486 (25.81%) Kubernetes
2 399 (21.19%) Terraform
3 379 (20.13%) Ansible
4 197 (10.46%) Grafana
5 165 (8.76%) Prometheus
6 69 (3.66%) Puppet
7 66 (3.51%) Progress Chef
8 43 (2.28%) vCenter Server
9 38 (2.02%) Packer
10 37 (1.96%) vRealize
11 34 (1.81%) Argo
11 34 (1.81%) Red Hat Satellite
12 31 (1.65%) Podman
13 27 (1.43%) Kibana
14 23 (1.22%) SCCM
15 21 (1.12%) Single Sign-On
16 20 (1.06%) Oracle RMAN
17 19 (1.01%) Nessus
18 18 (0.96%) VxRail
19 17 (0.90%) Consul
Vendors
1 305 (16.20%) VMware
2 291 (15.45%) Microsoft
3 240 (12.75%) Oracle
4 225 (11.95%) Red Hat
5 210 (11.15%) Splunk
6 104 (5.52%) Cisco
7 86 (4.57%) IBM
8 68 (3.61%) ServiceNow
9 53 (2.81%) Google
10 46 (2.44%) Dell
11 38 (2.02%) Palo Alto
12 34 (1.81%) CyberArk
13 28 (1.49%) SolarWinds
14 27 (1.43%) NetApp
15 26 (1.38%) AppDynamics
15 26 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 26 (1.38%) NVIDIA
16 25 (1.33%) Citrix
16 25 (1.33%) HP
17 22 (1.17%) Sybase